As I have aged, I have found myself suspicious of the popular Christian practice of giving something up for Lent. If you’re like me, you’ve lost a lot over the years, and perhaps you find surrendering even more an annoying and uncalled for notion.
The measure of each person is revealed in those three dimensions of length, breadth, and height. Those dimensions are available to us but not given freely. They depend on a focused championing of the credence that there exists a profound reciprocation in life.
As we politely but firmly usher 2021 out the door, what is to keep us from committing to more person-to-person contacts? Sure, we still have a pandemic going on. But I’m not just talking about in-person encounters. Instead of using social media as our perpetual online broker for human interaction, what about actually talking more with people in 2022?
How would you continue to spread the good news of God’s kingdom if you no longer had a church (as we have come to understand them) from which to minister? Who would be your audience in the here and now? Whether one is lay or clergy, the question beckons us all.
Ancestral theology, for those of us who have ascribed to and practiced it, can help define the experience of a comforting, informative visit from ancestor to descendant that opens the descendant’s eyes and heart to God in new and meaningful ways. We are at our best when we are open to the ways and means God uses to restore our souls.