Lent Guide 2023নমুনা

Week 5: When my plans don’t work out... (resentment)

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Sunday – Freedom from resentment

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on. ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”

Luke 15:20,22,25-32

When I come into the wilderness, I become aware of the biggest and cruellest reality of life: things don’t always go according to plan. And the question is, what do I do with that? What do I do with this pain? What do I do with these things that have happened to me, with the bitterness, with the anger, with the disappointment, with the resentment I am living with?

I become angry. I sit with high levels of aggression. I constantly expect a saviour, someone who will come to do justice by me. And at the end of the day I, just like the oldest son in the parable of the prodigal son, am caught up in bitterness: “I worked so hard and look what happened to me. Life is unfair. My dreams and the things I was looking forward to, never came to pass. I don’t deserve what has happened to me.”

I get caught up. I can’t move on. I can’t carry on.

The invitations is to accept, so that there can be a resurrection. New life has to come into being, and that goes along with pain.

Grace:

Lord, give me the grace of freedom from resentment.