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Held By Love
“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:16–19
Today, we are one week away from the crucifixion of Jesus, a week away from experiencing the horror of His death. Certainly, those who plan our worship services must look ahead and make preparations for how we will observe and memorialize the solemn events as a congregation. Their gaze is, by necessity, drawn beyond today to the agony of the Cross and the ecstasy of the empty tomb.
But we are not there yet.
We are here.
And we must resist the temptation to borrow the coming grief — or the coming joy — by looking so far ahead that we miss what Jesus wants us to hear today.
I confess that my own Lenten practice has been far more hurried than in years past. In a season that often invites us to examine uncomfortable truths about ourselves that we would rather avoid, I have found myself unusually distracted and restless. While I can name the circumstances and commitments that have contributed to the imbalance, this holy discomfort is mostly of my own making.
Being formed into the likeness of Jesus is slow work. It should not — indeed, it cannot — be rushed. Some lessons are easily learned. Others must be learned again and again.
In these final days of Lent, when our hearts feel stretched thin or our practices feel fragile, we are invited to rest in a love that surpasses knowledge. We do not have to fully understand it to be held by it. We simply allow ourselves to be drawn deeper into its breadth and length and height and depth, trusting that the love of God is making us whole.
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