It’s Getting A Little Harder…

To keep it going…this whole Lent thing. Today I am told in scripture to “pray for my enemies and those who persecute you” but that isn’t really what I want to do. I want to be angry. I want to lash out. I want people to feel what they have done to me or to others and to learn from it and to STOP.

But that isn’t going to happen. I know in my own world, the people who sometimes hurt me in the deepest way will never care enough about my feelings to examine what they have done or why it affects me so deeply. The people who make me feel the littlest don’t really see beyond their own inconvenience. It is something that I need to accept. It is a lack of emotional connectivity or capacity that disables some people to tune in with any depth. It is also my over-sensitivity, it is who I am and how I am made. God knows I have tried to change.

Maybe this is what Jesus had in mind when he said to pray for those who we might not think to pray for. I mean, there is truth in the idea that the simple ease of praying and loving those who never cross us, or who only see what it good in us sets up no challenge to grow in our own depths. By having to look at the other person who we might be angry at and remember that they too are a loved child of God, maybe that makes my well of compassion a little deeper or maybe it makes my ego a little smaller. Maybe it’s a reminder that it’s okay to just let things go. To cry it out but in the end to not hold on to whatever it is. Jesus tries to remind us that to truly love one must repeat this exercise over and over and over again. Just as he does with us.

So, yeah, it’s getting a little harder this lent but no one said it would be easy and “there’s no crying in baseball.” 😀