Two movements in human life are important: (a) deep reluctance to let loose of a world that has passed away, and (b) capacity to embrace a new world being given.

Lent is rather seeing how to take steps into God's future so that we are no longer defined by what is past and no longer distracted by what we have treasured or feared about the present. Lent is for embracing the baby given to old people; resurrection to new life in Easter; and the offer of a new world made by God from nothing.

The dominant ideology of our culture is committed to continuity and success and to the avoidance of pain, hurt, and loss. The dominant culture is also resistant to genuine newness and real surprise. It is curious but true, that surprise is as unwelcome as is loss. And our culture is organized to prevent the experience of both.

In a society that knows about initiative and self-actualization and countless other things, the capacity to lament the death of the old world is nearly lost. In a society strong on self-congratulation, the capacity to receive in doxology the new world being given is nearly lost.

4. There is a text that looms in resilient power. There is a waiting congregation, perhaps not tired out, but too sure of self, pretending buoyancy where there might have been transformation. There is the voice that takes the old script and renders it to evoke a new world we had not yet witnessed (cf. Isa. 43:19). The fourth and final partner is this better world given as fresh revelation.

Because if you cling excessively to the past, you will miss the newness being enacted before your very eyes.

Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

Do ye not comprehend that we are worms, Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly That flieth unto judgment without screen?

One thing I do know is that when I hold on tightly to the old things, God cannot fill my hands with the new.

Jesus is revealed in the changed lives of His beloved children.

As such, we should pray, as Macrina Weiderkehr prayed so eloquently, "O God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful.

Salvation is not the stopping point; it is the starting point.