Lenten Reading

I read this passage last year around this time. It is from a book by Walt Wangerin called Reliving the Passion. It is a daily devotional to take you through Lent and a great read. Hope it gets you ready. It's even better if you read it out loud


In the sincerest silence of my soul, I murmured over and over "I love you Lord Jesus."

Jesus was dying. I could do nothing to save him-not even to ease him. I could only watch and suffer the sorrow too. I was a child. Yet I saw every detail of his passion exactly as the Bible set it down. Everything. I learned everything. Not because I was precocious, but because I felt it all.

And always there came the moment when I burst into tears.

Jesus looked at me. The love in his face was so horrible that I started to cry, and I murmured over and over "I love you too! I love you Lord Jesus."

Did he hear me? At the moment I couldn't know, because he was dying.

Now I know.

He heard me.

By Easter it was not Winter in North Dakota any more. Neither was it Spring. It was bleak hell. My father was wearing a black robe. The altar had been stripped of linen. All things were sad, all things severe and dark and dark and very true. And the preacher said, "He died for you."

How was I supposed to feel at that? Guilty? Beloved?

Jesus, I was just a child then. I love you with an incomprehensible pain. I did not want you to be dead,

Jesus?

Dear Lord Jesus- do you know what I felt when my father read the rest of the story? Who ran to the tomb on Sunday morning? Me! That was me! I stuck my head in the empty spaces. And when the gardener spoke, I got me a good spot next to Mary Magdalene. And who was the gardener? Why it was you!

To Mary, you said "Mary."

But to me you said "Wally, I love you."

Ha ha! And I with shining eyes said " I love you too. I love you, Lord Jesus. I do."

This is the light that has shone in our darkness- in the winters of North Dakota, in the melancholy winters of old, exhausted souls- and the darkness has not overcome it! This, then, is the way that we may enter the story of Jesus, the history of our salvation, that the Gospel might in every way become our own.

Lent 2008