March 13 - to new heights

(submitted by Barbara Staley)

We visited my paternal grandmother almost every Sunday. That was OK but not as special as extended visits in the summer. My Grandmother lived on Filburn Island and I thought that the island was a very special place on earth. It was always an adventure to spend a week with her. Most times my grandfather would leave and go to his tile shed in Anna. When he left I knew we would have fun. She would put her rowboat in the water and we would travel to Blackberry Island where we picked the most scrumptious blackberries in the world. We laughed and talked and sometimes were just still in the quietness of Lake Loramie.

Wintertime meant ice fishing. I would always freeze and run back to the house where my grandmother had hot cocoa. I would sit beside the wood stove and watch her as she made noodles or whatever was on her agenda for the day. She taught me to make noodles and to peel a potato around and around producing on long continuous peel. I cherish the richness of those days. But I have found that my grandmother was just a taste of what it is like to love God and hunger after time with God.

Lent is upon us and I normally seek out a devotional that I hope draws me closer to God. This summer I experienced a silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani where I prayed and sang the psalms along with the monks who lived at the Abbey. Every two weeks they pray and sing though all one hundred and fifty psalms. Praying the psalms is the Lenten discipline I have chosen. Now, the psalms touch wonderful emotions in me but this Lent I want to be especially sensitive to the psalms that are difficult. Psalm thirty-eight is an example. It reads “There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin”. My intention is that God and I will have long conversations as we row over to Blackberry Island. I will be alone with God and know that God and only God can tell me the real truth about myself. The revelations will be painful at times, as well as uplifting, but I trust God will draw me ever closer. I want to wake up on Easter morning transformed.

I do not know what your Lenten journey looks like, but pray that you are traveling to new heights of love with God. Wouldn’t it be great to wake up on Easter morning so very extra full of God’s presence?

In the love of Christ!