What does Lent call us to do?

A week has gone by and the ashes have long fallen off our heads and perhaps we have already forgotten what Lent is all about.

This morning’s meditation from “The Black Book,” published by the Diocese of Saginaw, struck me as it quoted the bible verse from Mark that I use every time I baptize children.  “On coming out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came down from the heavens, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”  Mark 1:10-11

In the time of Christ, you only became a part of the family once your father declared, “this is my son (daughter).”  Prior to that, you were legally nobody.  We forget that the Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism is the same Spirit that descended upon us at our baptism.  It is the same God who calls to us, “You are my beloved son and daughter; with you I am well pleased.”  Pleased, just the way we are.  But all too often we spend our lives being who we (or others) think we ought to be.

What are we really being asked to do in Lent?  Easy answer.  Stop being who others want you to be and simply carry out what God has asked you to do as his son or daughter; be who you were born to be.  By definition, that is God’s plan – nothing more and nothing less.

Think what that would be like.