I love Chinese food especially when it includes the combination of sweet and sour or spicy and sweet. The hot mustard served with the egg roll causes the sweet sauce to seem even sweeter. It's this kind of combination of the hot and sweetness or sorrow and joy that make lent such a powerful time. The sorrow makes the grace of God seem even more powerful.

One writer said:

The Season of Lent is like a roller coaster ride with emotions that are down and up again and again as the story of our salvation makes plain our sinful ways and the cost of our redemption. We begin with Ash Wednesday where we roughly bump up against our own mortality. Here we know that sin and death are real, and they are real not just for someone else. Sin and death are real for us. This is where we begin the Lenten Season (on Ash Wednesday see article pg??) with out face pressed hard against the reality of our sin and our death. If we did not know how the story ends this would be a dark and depressing journey. But we do know how the story ends and
therefore in the midst of austerity and fasting, we remember our faithful Savior and the Easter declaration that life is always victorious over death.

(pg. 126, A Guide To Prayer For All Who Seek God, by Norman Shawchuck & Rueben P. Job, Upper Room, Nashville.)

There is a tendency in our society to avoid the difficult, the painful and the struggle of life. We want instant gratification and relief from the difficult things of life. In that respect Lent seems counter-intuitive. For Lent calls us to come face to face with the hard realities of life and our own personal responsibilities for the pain of life, the pain we cause in our life, the pain we cause others and the pain others and the world inflict upon us. Not because we are masochist but because face the realities of sin help us see the greatness of God’s grace.

So I invite you to the Lenten journey, a roller coaster of emotions, a journey designed to sweeten and strengthen the Easter experience. For remember, there is no resurrection without the cross.


Yours in Christ,
Stan