Hello, fellow pilgrims. This week’s Gospel reading (John 11:1-45) always stirs up so many images for me that it can be challenging to discern a single direction in which to take my thoughts and translate them onto paper. And looking through our Lenten devotional, it seems the publisher may have experienced the same dilemma. They chose several poems by Wendell Berry, as accompaniment to this Gospel, that interpreting this week’s lesson from an earthy perspective of death and resurrection rather than a spiritual one. I tend to lean toward spiritual resurrection and so, I chose a different poem to share with you this week.
In this week’s Gospel reading, Lazarus of Bethany becomes ill and dies, leaving his sisters Mary and Martha in flood of grief. Faithful as they are, they are also human and they cast their pain at his post mortem arrival. Lord, if you had been here, he wouldn’t have died! And, at the same time, affirming their faith: But, even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.
Jesus laments, and weeps, and raises Lazarus from the dead. Then he says the words that determined which poem I would share with you this week. He says:
Unbind him and let him go!
Unbind him and let him go. Wrapped in strips of cloth that prevented movement, Lazarus was limited by what bound him and he couldn’t escape that bondage alone. He needed help. Jesus’ help.
Have you ever felt bound by something you had no control over? Despair over something in your life or in the world? Despair over the what ifs and the doubts?
Call on Jesus to help you let it go. Trust in the Lord. Believe in His Love. And, as Wendell Berry puts it in today’s poem, enter the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. Come into the presence of still water [ps 23, v2]. Rest in the grace of the world, and [be] free.
The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
—From The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 1999)
You are Beautiful and you are Beloved. Rest in the Grace of the world and be free.
Angela+