One of the reasons I love lent (besides the color purple) is that it forces me to realize the paradox Michael Card mentions above.  We share in Christ’s incarnation, we belong to eternity, to that place where time and the urgency it causes cannot rule over us, yet we are oppressed by it now.  This paradox causes us stress, it attempts to divide our loyalties as things like having money to eat and a house over our head seem to prevent us from spending time in fellowship with God.  Demands of family and work call on our energies, dragging physical and spiritual strength down.

But that is where we need to come from a better understanding of the incarnation, a better understanding of what this Lenten Journey is.  For it is one where we live in the dissonance, in the dysfunction, but only as we live….in Christ Jesus.  It doesn’t have a grasp on us, and it can’t drag us from His presence. 

Too easily we forget the promises of the incarnation, to easily we forget the end of the great commission  is a promise to always be here, with us, to easily we forget the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, too easily we forget… 

Today, remember His presence, remember that you are born of the Spirit… remember this Lenten Journey is a walk with Christ to His cross… where He will die…for us. (It ain’t our journey or our cross!)

Godspeed