Lenten Discipline: Seeking and Tuning

Today we lost an hour to the dreaded Daylight Savings Time adjustment.  I hate this day.  What is that about?  The claim is that we get "more daylight".  Really? Have these people not had math or astronomy?  It is very bizarre.  So, I woke up at 5:00 (which was really, as my body clock pointed out to me, 4:00).  And while I went around and did all of my Sunday morning things for what was already an early day, Maynard (the dog) slept in.  He knew better and just didn't want to be bothered with anything that might get in the way of his schedule.  Maynard is a rescue lab that I got in August and as this was our first "spring forward" day together, I think it confirmed to him that I really am nuts. 

I drove to the church at the time that I was usually privileged to view the sunrise on Sunday mornings.  There was no sunrise but rather a sky that held varying degrees of light as the sunrise began to stretch and get ready for the day, not really wanting to be bothered with anything that might get in the way of its schedule.  It really was rather beautiful, though (sans light, of course).  I stopped at the same red light at the same intersection that I do twice each year. It seems that I always change my car clock at the same place.  And I always have to once again figure out how to do it.  You punch "Clock" and then the radio screen lights up with the directions:  "H-Seek...M-Tune".  (It's telling you to use the "seek" and "tune" buttons to recalibrate your time and adjust its setting so that it makes more sense.)

The meaning was not lost on me even in my somewhat blurry state.  What a great metaphor for this Lenten season--seeking and tuning.  Usually when we see the word "seek", our finely-trained minds go immediately to "finding".  But on this spiritual path, that doesn't work as well.  This is not a path of seeking and finding God.  God is not lost.  God is not hiding out waiting for some grand hide and seek game to end.  God is right here waiting for us, waiting for us to hear, waiting for us to listen.  And so this time of Lent is a time of our seeking and tuning, a time of recalibrating our lives so that we will be in line with the time of God, a time of adjusting our setting, so to speak, so that it will make more sense.  God is never out of the bounds of our life; sometimes we just have to stop and tune ourselves to the music that was there all along.  And once a year, the church year gives us a chance to do just that.  My memory is a little rusty.  I usually have to figure out how to do it all over again.  But God is patiently waiting for me to spiritually tune myself.  And if I don't get it completely right, God, in infinite grace and mercy, always moves a little closer to me anyway.

So in this Season of Lent, tune yourself to the place where you best connect with God!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli