2016 Belmont University Lenten GuideSample

There is, for me, at the heart of the Lenten season a sense of heaviness. The scene from the film, The Mission, in which Robert De Niro’s character is instructed, as penance, to drag the vestiges of his mercenary life through the jungle, always reminds me of the emotional and spiritual weight of my own struggle. As I consider this weight, and the neediness which comes with my inability to “make all things right,” I am reminded by the Isaiah passage of the compassion, the care, the understanding offered by the model of the suffering servant to those all of us who carry the weight of our own lives, that: a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. The Lenten season is my bruised reed season, my smoldering wick season. There is an inherent fragility in these days for me. I am fully human and fully needy, in ways that are crisper in this season of the year. In my garden the tender tips of daffodil foliage begin to break the surface of the soil, having toiled out of sight for months. In order for them to come to full bloom they must each wait in the dark cold earth—a necessary penitential season—to experience their own full bloom. The language of Isaiah here gives me solace and gratitude. In this season we are reminded that it is not up to us, that we are not left to do the work alone, no matter the voices we carry that seem to tell us this is so. The word capable recently rose off the page like a digital-effect in a film. I recognized in it the fullness of my ability. But I also heard it as: cap-able; the invitation to consider the “cap on my abilities.” This gracious space allows me to know my own limitations and know where I need to invite others into this needy space: the space in which, “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people... to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” May the penitential darkness open our blind eyes to the gift of our limitations and fragility. DANE ANTHONY Lecturer College of Theology & Christian Ministry