24 Feb This Lent Let’s Begin To Be The Love Our World Needs…Small Step By Small Step.
There’s an earworm song in the musical Moulin Rouge that, if you aren’t careful, will stick in your head for weeks on end. In it, the two main characters are singing the beginning of a flirtation (on top of a giant elephant, but that’s not the point of this story). Hoping to convince the aloof and beautiful Satine that love is worth the risk, our protagonist, penniless poet Christian, turns to the lyrics of popular songs:
“Love is a many splendored thing!” he tells her. “Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love!”
“Please, don’t start that again,” replies Satine, with more than a hint of exhaustion in her tone.
Some days, it’s easy to relate to Satine’s exhaustion. It’s easy to look around the world and see only the deep deficit of love. Lack of love for the planet that melts our glaciers and fills our oceans with plastic. Lack of love for our neighbor that leads to polarizing racism, violent wars, holidays spent around tense extended family tables. Lack of love for ourselves that leaves us feeling burnt out and, just like Satine, more than a little disillusioned.
It might not be easy to feel inspired to join in a chorus about love lifting us up where we belong when it feels like there’s so little love to go around.
Lent is a season of noticing what’s missing, and practicing for what’s to come. Every year, we spend 40 days preparing our bodies, minds, hearts and souls for the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection. The miracle of a love so big that it changed the world. A love that overcame everything… even death. And every year, we’re invited to meditate on the possibility that even in our world that seems so lacking in love, in our failures, doubts, and regrets, we are loved unconditionally. Transformatively. Unrelentingly, by a good and generous God.
What if, as we invite the miracle of that love into our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls this Lenten season, we can take one more courageous step in the name of love?
What if we could begin to Be Love in the world today?
It might sound a little daunting. We might feel so overwhelmed by the challenges we’re facing – the great big world challenges, and the deeply personal ones – that a big idea like “being love” feels… well, like a lot to ask. Maybe those of us who’ve had a particularly difficult year might be tempted to roll our eyes a little and reply “Please. Don’t start that again.”
Perhaps the place we can begin is with small, daily steps. With small, doable loving actions. And by simply taking those little steps, maybe we’ll discover that the great big Love that brought Jesus to earth isn’t so distant after all. That it’s been inside us, and all around us, all along – just waiting for us to let it reveal itself.
What better way to understand the power of what Jesus has so lovingly done for us than by seeking ways to BE that love throughout our Lenten journey toward Holy Week and Easter?
So, wherever you are in your spiritual journey – whether you love the idea of Lent or aren’t quite sure – we’ve created a simple tool you can use to help you and your family practice loving yourselves, each other, your neighbors and strangers and the whole world this Lenten season. At the end of this blog post, you can find three downloadable posters.
Each of them contains suggestions and ideas to help you and your family get inspired to Be Love to yourselves, to others, and to the world. Each poster also has a simple meditation you can practice every day – say it as a prayer directly to God, or a peaceful reminder for yourself, whichever feels best to you.
We hope you’ll print and display these posters in your home over the next few weeks and maybe use them as a way to connect more deeply with God’s love. The Love that changes everything.
The Love that really is all we need.
This Lent, let us take time to reflect, to repent, and to mourn the lack of love so evident in the world around us. Let’s recognize the places we feel regret or cynicism, exhaustion or doubt. Let’s bring those broken things before the God whose love is big enough to hold them.
And then, let’s take just one step further. Let’s begin to practice small, loving steps that help us follow Jesus’ call to us in Matthew 22 – to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love the world. To love our own beloved souls.
To be love… together.
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