a holy lent--harmony
During the season preceding Easter, the devoted of certain Christian traditions often give up something or find a new discipline to adopt. One appropriate way of experiencing a holy Lent is to go through an extended period of self-examination. Beginning on Ash Wednesday (today!) and culminating with the celebration of Easter one is encouraged to ask oneself tough questions…questions like “Do I love God with my whole heart and soul and mind?” or “What worldly idols lure me from my single-minded devotion to Jesus?”
The four weeks of Advent leading up to the celebration of Christ’s birth are sometimes approached as a “little Lent”. As part of last December’s observance, I spent one of the weeks reading and rereading these verses from Psalm 84: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.” And each day after reading that passage, I was asked what I was longing for that day.
Seven words came to me during Advent and I thought Lent might be a perfect opportunity to revisit and unpack them. Perhaps you’d like to join me.
The first word that came to me was HARMONY. In music, harmony is not the same thing as unison singing. It is the sound of voices coming into tune with each other. I think my longing for harmony stems from the dissonance and violence that I hear in our world. Voices that produce harmony sometimes seem to be side-lined and silenced. Why is that?
During Advent’s emphasis on the coming Messiah, we heard harmony in the voices of angels, praising God and singing “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth!” I would love to hear that angel song…harmonious voices like those that inspired the shepherds in their fields to say, “Let’s go! Let’s see what God is doing!” And then once they had seen the baby who had been foretold, they went singing all the way back to the fields, harmonizing with the angel song.
I pray to join the song of the angels, for the harmony of voices to sing God’s praise. To sing songs of love, not loud rants and war chants. To ask more questions; express fewer opinions, worry less about winning arguments. All these things are hard for me. But O, how I long for singing and harmony. Don’t you?
How can I harmonize with the angels in a world faced with war or divided by ideologies? How can you? What songs might we need to give up singing? My friend Betty wrote me in a letter recently, “Conformity doesn’t equal unity…’Love one another’ is the commandment … [we should be] asking God to work us ‘into his most excellent harmonies.’”
Love, Liz
This photo is supplied by Mira Rubin, a Ukrainian woman married to my cousin Jesse. These are Mira’s angels…her sons and her mother in Ukrainian dress, singing the song of peace. Pray for sovereign Ukraine!
