Suggested Readings: Psalms 31:9-16, Isaiah 54:9-10, Hebrews 2:10-18
Lent is often about lack or doing without—especially something normally considered a pleasure. It takes some getting used to, at first: a social media fast, abstaining from sugar or alcohol, no more binge-watching Netflix after midnight.
While Lent can feel transactional, we do not abstain now simply to gain later. In fact, whatever lack we choose to live with reminds us of our inherent insufficiency. We intentionally acknowledge that without God we remain incomplete.
But the Psalmist invites us to contemplate another kind of lack:
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, And my years with sighing;
Verses like these began to resonate when I lost my father in 2021. I’m still not used to his absence. This lack that I live with defines me in no small way. How I long to call him, to hear his voice, to hold his hand again. Students in my First Year Writing courses know I keep a ball marker in my pocket as a daily reminder. Time, too, serves as memento; March 22nd was the day he died.
Anniversaries offer us a reason for recollection and remembrance. The mental processes that follow can be restorative, even aspirational. But time is a tricky gift. Anniversaries can also haunt, rendering us immobile in anticipation of imminent grief. A dear friend whose father died almost a decade ago told me that one year, the anniversary of his father's death passed by unacknowledged. The next day he was gripped by guilt. He added a calendar reminder to stave off that extra layer of pain caused by not remembering. Such dominance a calendar date can possess!
Yet today’s assemblage of verses juxtapose human loss with divine love. In Psalm 31, God’s “steadfast love” serves as a salve for the sorrow that fills our years. The pronouncement from Isaiah promises “my steadfast love shall not depart from you.” In the thick of it, it’s easy to wonder how this can be the case. That’s how the Psalmist starts, after all: give me grace, God, in my moment of distress!
Through my experiences of grief, I’ve settled on this: the distress is the grace. That heart-in-my-throat physical response is what God’s steadfast love actually feels like.
Blake Remington