Lent

I remember an experience when I was 19 – I was speaking in a group of fellow college students about faith. Afterwards an older student leader came up to me and told me that I was a gifted communicator and needed to be the primary person speaking to the group. By 21 – I was an ordained minister.

It is a truth universally acknowledged by all parents that one’s house is never cleaned faster, more efficiently, and less effectively, than in the 15 minutes before guests are coming over.

Having young children – I have a four year old daughter and a two year old son – means that even when the house is truly clean, there is a low-level hum of chaos in the air. So when a guest is on their way, we go into what I call “looks clean mode.” “It doesn’t have to be clean, it just has to look clean” is a sentence I’ve said more times than I’d like to a

“Go to the ER as soon as you can to be admitted to the hospital for treatment. Scheduling an appointment will take too long,” the doctor solemnly stated as he broke the bad news. We hurriedly gathered some extra clothes in a bag and made the long drive from the Woodlands to the medical center, my mother, father and I, all shell shocked. Nurses, assistants, and doctors came and went as we struggled to find a way to hope.

In June of 2018 people around the world were transfixed by the story of twelve boys and their soccer coach, who had been trapped in an underwater cave in Thailand. It took eighteen days for a rescue team of international experts to draw them out from what would have become their watery grave. The whole world knew that a plan was being devised to send in a team of divers, but for nine long days, the boys and their coach crouched in the dark, uncertain of their fate, completely unaware of the intricate plans being laid for their rescue.

What tells the story of a scar? It could be a physical scar, an emotional scar, or otherwise. What has grown out of that? The open space, that gaping wound. Were you stitched back together? Who did the stitching? What shape does your face take when you think back on the story that scar holds? What grows out of that fertile space, that gaping wound?

In this wild world, sometimes it feels like we have gathered around a giant blanket, fashioned like a game you played at P.E. or camp. You know the one, the one where everyone grabs a piece of the parachute or the blanket and, moving the large fabric together, we go tossing something up in the air.