What is your current “go-to” for inspiration?
Oh my friends, the Covid pandemic during Lent can be a challenge. Did the lack of family gatherings and hugs make last Thanksgiving and Christmas difficult? Now consider the extra strain of walking through a pandemic and adding the choice of another “without” (a choice of fasting or abstinence). This challenge is more different because you actually choose it, but that does not mean it is a piece of cake. Throw in crazy weather, for example extreme cold or snow in areas you don’t expect it. That is a lot to handle, so with all of these emotional challenges, explore your current inspirational “go-to” for creativity and for life.
The weather and Covid are outside forces we need to deal with and have no control over, so why even mention Lent? I read a quote from a devotion our church went through a couple of years ago that sums it up very well. “Rest in the delightfully freeing knowledge that God is God and you are not.” Lent can be a time for celebration!
What? You are kidding. How can I celebrate? I have to fast.
Stay with me because you will be surprised…
…and may find input for your current inspiration. Think about what Lent and its history mean to you. As a child, and even for many years after becoming a Christian, Lent was a hard, dreary time of forty days to endure til I could finally either return to my coffee or chocolate. I may have gone to the liturgies or services that talked about Lent, but it was not anything with which I could deeply connect. I obeyed.
Two years ago, our whole church went through a devotional series during the Lenten season entitled Does God Really Love Me? Weekly small groups and the weekend messages dealt with questions concerning God and His extravagant love for us. We covered topic such as:
- Perfect Love
- Revealed Love
- Breathtaking Love
- Expansive Love
- Unshakeable Love
- Embracing Your True Identity
- Confronting Identity Thieves
- Rest
As we opened up to comprehend the reality of God’s intimate love, I fell on my face, grasping in a different way the depth of the cost Jesus paid for me.
There are steps that need to be taken on our end if this is something we desire. When a mind and body are filled with activities and projects, is there room or space to receive Love? Can this be where saying NO to one activity for a time opens space for a long needed input?
Check out this post written from my time going through the series, God’s Word Vaults.
As you release a single need, you may discover your current inspiration lies in a deeper relation with Jesus.
A different lens for your current inspiration
Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk, wrote a series of essays contained in Seasons of Celebration where he includes another lens to approach Lent. He describes this time “not to be merely a season simply of a few formalized penitential practices, half understood and undertaken without interest, but a time of metanoia, the turning of all minds and hearts to God in celebration of the Paschal Mystery.” (p. 114)
It may not be pleasant, but recognizing the uncomfortable time, being honest with God, and listening makes you open to receive. Your heart then has an opportunity to explore current inspiration; to express a depth you may have never known before. I am not speaking about a creative product to sell. I am referring to exploring a deeper place in your soul with God and then creating out of a place of healing.
Review your input for current inspiration.
I honor this season in your life. The losses you have experienced may feel as if they go beyond the place where words could ever reach.
I offer you two thoughts. One: art is a form of healing. Take the space created during the fast or abstinence to receive. The emptiness and pain you experience and healing you receive need to be expressed. It is worship.
Number two: God’s mercy and grace are rich and flowing. Allow Him to be in control of this walk with your hands, mind and heart open. Discover how even during Lent you can…
