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But we proclaim Christ crucified…
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
—1 Corinthians 1.23-24
From a lectionary reading for Lent 3: 1 Corinthians 1.18-25
Reflection for Saturday, March 10 (Day 16 of Lent)
If there’s anything the wilderness journey of Lent should teach us, it’s that the place where we think we have something all figured out is the place where we should fall on our knees in humility and think again. Like a desert, Lent invites us into a space where seemingly wild contradictions hold together. This is a season to draw close to the God who provides wellsprings in the wilderness, who brings honey from the rock, who offers beauty in the places that seem most barren. And who, Paul tells us in today’s reading, became wisdom and power incarnate in a man whose life ended, by the world’s reckoning, in utter defeat.
This God makes little sense. And so this season challenges us to be present to the God who does not always seem sensible, and to trust that something deeper than sense is at work in our lives. These wilderness days of Lent invite us to stop, to look closely at our landscape, and to open our eyes to how God dwells in what may seem the unlikeliest places: in paradox, in mystery, in what appears to be contradictory, in what the world overlooks or belittles. Lent confronts us with our own certainties and assumptions about how God should act; it calls us to sit with God’s contradictions until a door opens in their midst.
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