What a Week
by Dale Jones
After the first week of Lent, I was feeling pretty good about my spiritual practice. I had worked in a brief devotional and prayer time each day – almost. I had carved out time several days for some exercise.
In the second week of Lent, the progress that had me feeling a little bit successful went to a hot place in a hand basket. With a crazier-than-usual schedule, I skipped both my daily quiet time and my jogging session with the treadmill. My schedule, or perhaps my time management, worsened rather than improved, and I missed a second day.
Several days into the second week of Lent, my primary exercise activity had been dashing from building to building as I was late for meetings (admittedly more intense than jogging, but of too short duration for any spiritual or physical value). The closest thing to meditation and quiet time had been pondering how to recover from an inadvertent but serious omission on the job. An outsider examining my life over these several days would have doubtlessly concluded that apparently my Lenten practice was to give up these activities and traits, among others: adequate sleep, meeting deadlines, and presence of mind.
Then the time arrived for a previously planned trip to Tennessee, to work with my brother on a project we undertake about this time every year. As fate had it, the spouse of a Tennessee cousin died a couple days before I left Chicago, and so I attended her memorial service while I was there. This unplanned family occasion provided a mental and spiritual reset for me.
Brenda had struggled with multiple chronic illnesses for years, but continued to remain upbeat and to encourage those in family, her church and workplace communities. Over the last year and a half, the diseases progressed in severity, to the point of taking her life. As symptoms and pain increased harshly in her final months, her ready smile, abiding faith, and perseverance seemed all the more remarkable. Brenda had demonstrated some key truths of living even as she was dying. I realized – again – that I have a priorities problem.
So it is another week, and another chance for me to attempt to turn my sine-wave Lenten practice into a line with a more steadily increasing slope.
Grace and Peace,
Dale
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