Seasonal Observations

 In a few days I’ll go to the depths of the basement, rummage around for a worn plastic bag, and take its contents out for investigation – a large planter base, an old plastic jar, gauze and a rock.  Curious items indeed but all are necessary for making a resurrection garden.  Dirt will fill the planter base then moss will give it texture.  If it’s within reach a few tiny flowers will be planted, pebbles will make up a path and crosses may be erected.  On Friday the gauze will go inside the jar and a stone will seal the tomb until it is rolled away on Sunday.

Observation of the church calendar is not something Diana and I practiced in the earlier years of our marriage.  I’m not exactly sure why, maybe it was the bad word associations in our minds…ritual, meaningless, dead, liberal, religious.   

We have discovered that celebrating the days and seasons of the church year to be a catalog of remembrance….of recollection.  It’s an opportunity to collect our thoughts and focus them on the particular events or meanings surrounding Christ’s life.  Seasons interrupt the normalcy and regularity of the ordinary with intensity.  Participation is not to make us ritualistically religious but more alive.  More alive to Christ. 

These seasonal observations are much like the spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer or simplicity.  They prepare the ground as a farmer does in the spring when he cultivates the fields, plants the seed, waters the plants and then waits for God to give the increase.  Observations do nothing in and of themselves, but they prepare our hearts for a work of God’s grace.  

The Lenten season in particular is a time of reflection, watchfulness and devotion that readies us for the celebration of Christ's death, burial and resurrection.  It’s forty days to ponder alienation, propitiation, reconciliation and to rediscover the familiar stories that give meaning to these words.  Most of all it’s a time set aside to wonder and to worship.