Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
As I’m sure most of you are, we’re fully into the season of Lent right now in Campus Ministry. This time of introspection and personal preparation is always an interesting one for me. In my own faith journey, I have come to value these 40 days as a way to bring intentionality to my walk with Christ and to re-center myself on my constant need for God’s grace. In my work here at TLU, I have witnessed the truth that the cycles of the liturgical calendar do not always mesh with the cycles and needs of my people.
In fact, in a college setting, they rarely, if ever, align with the cycles and needs of our students, faculty, and staff.
It’s weird sometimes, being in a community that commemorates the beginning of Lent at Ash Wednesday and then sends our students away to celebrate the culmination of Easter with others. It’s weird sometimes, being in a community that begins the work of Advent at the end of the fall semester and then never has the opportunity to celebrate the birth of Christ together at Christmas. Added on top of this are the numerous current global and national issues that weigh on our souls, and all of a sudden, the crisp, clean lines of our worship calendar, so well divided by color and liturgical symbolism, all of a sudden does not seem to work as well as it should. Our expectations of “church” have been thrown off, our understanding of these different seasons here on campus have been muddled.
This year’s Ash Wednesday service was a great example of that. Some of our numbers were ready to sit in the ashes together, to remember our own mortality, and to begin a season of introspection and personal preparation. Others were walking into the chapel after having completely bombed a test or missed our alarms for the thousandth time this semester alone. Some were feeling overwhelmed with their full class load and four on-campus jobs, wondering if their friendships and mental health could handle the strain of it all. Still others are worried for their own and their family’s safety, wondering if our world no longer has a place for them. For them, dwelling on their own mortality and need for grace might only add to the burdens they carry . . .
So we hold it all in tension. We spoke that day of our need for grace and for God, yes, but we also remembered something important: We might be made from dust, and we might return to dust, but that dust from which we come? It is made of the very same stuff as the stars in the sky. We heard that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and even in our sinfulness, God loves us entirely and chooses to walk with us in the muck and mire of creation.
Maybe you’re feeling like the cycles of liturgical symbolism aren’t fully working for you right now, too. Maybe it all feels muddled for you, as it does for our community. If this is you, friend, I invite you to sit in the tension with us this Lenten season. May God meet you there in the discomfort of thrown-off expectations, and may grace cover you entirely.
In the name of the one who created both the stars in the sky and all of us: Amen.