“Return to the Lord your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” (Joel 2:13)

While we may adjust our clock times backward and forward (don’t forget to spring ahead on March 12), there is no adjusting the seasons in nature. They have a rhythm of their own.

The Christian Church has entered into one of the holiest seasons of the Church year – Lent. This season of 40 days is a time set aside to intentionally meditate on the meaning of what Jesus has done for all humanity. We contemplate on his suffering, his betrayal, his pain, and eventually his death.

He knew the mission he was on – a mission from God to save all humanity – would ultimately result in death, yet he also knew that God would raise him to new life and us as well. The same God who created the world, would continue again and again to send prophets, messengers, and eventually God’s own Son to save it for good.

Still, again and again humans turn from God’s ways. We don’t love as Jesus loved. We hold on to grudges, and pain. Instead of seeing others as God sees us through the eyes of love, we practice racism, hatred, violence, and prejudices of so many kinds. Again and again we fall short of living lives of love and peace.

Lent gives us a chance to reflect on our lives and turn around. The prophet Joel says, “Return to the Lord your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” The prophet’s message speaks to us across the centuries of God’s steadfast love.

The season of Lent is a time to embark on a sacred pilgrimage with a destination that leads to the cross, a human symbol of suffering and pain, yet one transformed by God’s love into new life. We practice giving up anything that would come between us and God by also practicing love, peace, and acts of compassion for others. As we meditate on Christ’s suffering, we understand the depths of God’s love for us. God in Jesus literally went to hell and back for each and every person because “God so loved the world.” (John 3:16)

As we walk the old paths of Jesus’ suffering, and create new paths of being, we are changed. So often we walk familiar paths, which get worn deeper and deeper, such as unkindness, judgmentalism, being quick to speak words of anger or jumping to the wrong conclusions that become a way of being if walked for too long. This season of Lent is a time to forge new paths – of self-sacrificing love and compassion. If it is peace we seek in this world, then we must first walk the path of peace ourselves in order to see it unfold everywhere.

No matter what we do, God never leaves us and comes to us again and again seeking us out with unimaginable love and grace. God invites us again and again to draw closer to God. And God forgives us again and again. This Lent, let us journey in the footsteps of Jesus knowing that because of him new life awaits us as God transforms death into life again and again.