Jesus, as we continue to walk toward the cross with you, I remember again St. Anselm who wrote a theology text and then rewrote the whole thing as prayer; it had seemed to him all wrong to talk about you as though you weren’t right there listening to the conversation, initiating it, allowing us to know you at all.

You are one who calls us into this journey with you and walks with us each step of the way.

You are the one who invites us to come closer, to lay our head on your chest, our ear pressed up tight against the deep lub-dub of your heartbeat.

You are the one in whom our journey ends.

We speak of Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday as though we know the whole story. We know it only a little bit. We need to know it again, to live it more deeply, to walk through it hand in hand with you. We need you to point out the details and show us how our stories mingle with and flow from yours.

Teach us, we pray, what it means to be human.

Shape in us your heart’s love-beat.

Satisfy our longing, and help us long more deeply still.

Mighty God made one of us, love us closer to you as we continue to walk these weeks together toward death and then on through death into life that can never be broken.

An edited repost from the archives.

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P.S. Want more? Here’s a poem (On My Ash(less) Wednesday) and a blog post (Lent in Love) by another woman encountering Jesus in her real-life Lenten journey.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash