Lent has begun. Forty days of spiritual preparation.  Getting ready for the Ash Wednesday services, a staff member came into the office and informed us that he had just found a cat in the sanctuary.  Stranger things have happened in my ministry.  At one church there were rats, at another there were bats, and now cats.   I don’t know how many “…ats” there are left to keep the rhyme going.  Strange things can happen when you leave a church door open.  Lost cats and even a few lost people often find there way in.   I have also discovered that even stranger things can happen when we leave a door to our heart open.  We may come face to face with grace, we may find redemption, and we could experience renewal.  Lent invites us to open the doors, both of the church and of our hearts, expect something to enter in and be ready for it when it does.

 “Admiration is happy self-surrender; envy is unhappy self-satisfaction.” 

Soren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death

On a recent 2.5 mile run through my neighborhood, I found myself with the wind in my face for the first 1.5 miles and the wind at my back for the last mile.  The first 1.5 miles required more energy to keep pace, more concentration to keep stride and more determination to keep going.  I have discovered that the wind can be both friend and foe.   It blows where it chooses and many times adjustments have to be made to keep pace, conserve energy and finish strong.   Spirit in the Bible is ruach or wind.  Blowing wind has been used to describe the movement of God’s spirit.  Like the wind, the Spirit of God blows where it chooses and can seem, at varying times,  to be both friend and foe.   This is the season of shifting winds.  Day to day, the rising and falling temperatures are based largely on the direction of the wind.  Wind from the north brings cold artic air and lower temperatures.  Wind from the south brings warm gulf air and higher temperatures.   In the midst of shifting winds, storms often occur.  They do in our spiritual lives as well.  When the Spirit of God blows in one direction and we go in another, a spiritual storm can occur.  The storm, rather than the Spirit drives us.   As I run the race of life, how often do I run with the Spirit or against it?  How can my life consistently be spirit-driven rather than storm-driven?   Will this help me avoid, or at least, make it through, the storms of life?   Maybe on my next run, I’ll have more answers.

On a recent run through my neighborhood, I found myself casting two shadows.  Let me explain.  It was dusk and the sun was going down over the western horizon.  The moon was positioned high in the eastern night sky and the street lamps had begun to cast their rays throughout the neighborhood.  About 1.5 miles into my run, I began to notice that every time I passed a street light, and the light was behind me, a long shadow was cast far in front of me.  About 2 miles into the run, I suddenly noticed another shadow cast just over my right shoulder.  It was a bit disarming at first, casting two shadows at the same time, one far in front of me, the other just over my right shoulder.  The long shadow would come and go, but the short shadow stayed with me.  At the end of my run, when both shadows were gone, I found myself wondering about the shadow that my life is casting.  We all cast shadows with our lives, by the way we run the race of life, through our words and our deeds, in the way we invest ourselves in things that matter or things that really don’t, through the causes we support and the difference we try to make in the world.  Yes, we all cast shadows….the question is…”Will they be long ones or short ones?”

I recently received an email addressing a very important issue.  Parts of the email were written in ALL CAPS.  I am sure they were written this way to convey their importance, but according to email etiquette, ALL CAPS is tantamount to YELLING AT SOMEONE to get your point across.  As I read the email, I discovered myself feeling less and less inclined to hear what was being said, not because of what was being said, but because of how it was being said.  We live in a world that so often communicates in ALL CAPS.  We talk AT ONE ANOTHER rather than talk with one another. Important issues get LOST IN TRANSLATION.   The world can appear to be filled with nails when we go through life acting like a hammer.   As I began to respond to this email, I found myself wanting to write back in ALL CAPS.  Having been YELLED AT, I wanted to YELL BACK.  But I also realized that if I yelled back, the issue would be lost in the emotion, and a genuine opportunity to discuss an important issue would have been missed.  So, I waited until I could offer a lowercase response. The issue, after all, is important.