When Walt Wiltschek wrote the Lenten devotional, “We Wait for Light,” he could not have known the crisis our world would be facing when his readers opened the booklet on Ash Wednesday. Certainly, Isaiah in the 8th century BCE, could not have known our 2022 conflicts. Yet, how fitting their words are for our situations today.
Justice, truth, righteousness–where do we find these in our headlines? In our leaders? In our mirrors?
In the past week, I have found myself often feeling similar to the way Wiltschek did in the moving introduction to the devotional. Although metaphorically, I have felt balled up in a corner with darkness around me like a cold, heavy weight. It seems to be taking a long time as I eagerly await the light of hope and warmth to reach through.
In the Isaiah verses, the people had turned away from God, their own hearts and actions creating barriers between them and Him. They needed to dismantle those barriers in order to find a way back to justice, truth, and righteousness.
How much of our darkness have we created ourselves? What kinds of things have we collected in our boxes that we lug around, as our pastors showed us in Children’s Time on Sunday? Do we have barriers between us and God in there? What “hard work” will we need to do to find our way back to the warm light of God’s presence?
What “hard work” will we need to do as we uphold each other in love and forgiveness while we unpack our boxes?
Wiltschek ends today’s entry with a directive that sounds like hard work to me: “What in your life needs to be dismantled to improve your relationship with God? Pray for strength to deconstruct the sin in your life.”
Often, the physical and emotional darkness seems overwhelming and the work needed to ascend into light takes more effort than is available. In those moments I find it helps to remember that we already have the Light within us. I spent 40+ years as a member of the Quaker meeting in Harrisburg and a key tenet in Quakerism is the Light Within or that of God within each person (also known as the Christ within). I do not do as good a job remembering this truth as I should (part of the contents of my "box"), but knowing that the Light is there within each of us, even when we don't remember it is there, helps.
I'm looking forward to this Lenten series and appreciate the work Nurture Commission and Ellen and Olivia have put into it.
I carry a big box full of memories from my roller coaster life, some wonderful, some not so. It's no sin to look back to enjoy or learn from our experiences, but it's no great honor either, to paraphrase from Fiddler on the Roof. What I need to do is look forward to what I can do in the future for others.