The season of Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. Lent is a time for paying attention, opening our eyes, our ears and our hearts in order that we may find and be found.
Back in the early 1400’s, when daring sailors were pushing farther and farther west into the Atlantic, reports kept coming back of beautiful islands out there beyond the horizon called the St. Brendan Islands. In hopes of enlarging his territory and realm, the King of Spain issued a proclamation to spur the bravest of his sea captains to go and find these islands. The proclamation went like this:
Did the captain ever find those islands? We don’t know. We never hear of Captain Vogado again in the pages of history. Perhaps he went looking for the islands and never found them. Perhaps he was too old to go out on any further adventures. Perhaps he never went looking for them because he was convinced they did not exist. We just don’t know about Capt. Vogado. But, according to the King, those lands were his provided he could find them.
God is always here for us. God is closer to us than the air we breathe and the ground on which we stand. But we will never know God, we will never find God or know what it is to be found by God, until we go out looking.
Lent is a perfect time to go out looking for God. Lent is a time for training ourselves to see what is already there, but hidden and obscured by other things that get in the way. Lent is a time for starting out on a journey with the destination of finding ourselves and, more importantly, finding the One who has never lost us.
Won’t you join with me in taking up the journey?
In Christ,
Pastor Steve