Borrowed metaphors

The lenten season never really meant much to me until I started going to a church that observes it and discusses its meaning. I think I still have in my head what those Southern Baptist ladies in northern Florida and central Texas told me in Sunday school, "We don't celebrate lent. We only celebrate Easter. Jesus is risen, not dead."

Well, doesn't he have to be dead in order to rise?

I like the idea that thoughts and feelings should get darker and darker as the season approaches so that when Easter does arrive, it feels like a true resurrection. If I believe that God took human form in Jesus, lived, loved, died, and rose again here on earth, the weeks leading up to his symbolic death should be mournful and introspective. And when Easter comes, true light enters back into my life and renews me completely.

It's not often that I blog about these things, mainly because they are very deep and personal thoughts and can't be expressed fully with a keyboard. Heavy thoughts for a heavy morning -- my family is sick this week and trying to remember what it was like when our noses weren't running and our throats weren't burning.