The experts say that if you’re feeling thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. Drink plenty of water before you exercise or spend time in the sun, they say, because well before you feel the tug of thirst, your body is already depleted and dehydrated. I wonder if it works this way with the spirit; I know I’m not always fully hydrated in the spiritual sense.
Lent, the liturgical season devoted to reflection on what our baptism means – our commitment to our faith and to the example of Jesus’ love and sacrifice – asks us to drink deeply from the cup that Jesus himself asked to be taken from him in Luke 22:42: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”
Don’t most of us live dry lives? We go through our days on automatic, forgetting to drink deeply of the cup that is always there for us, the cup that runs over (Psalm 23:5). We don’t realize how brittle we’re becoming.
This Lenten season, I’m going to do my best to drink from that cup of Christ’s love.
This message is excerpted from “Lent: A time to rehydrate” by Karen Craigo in the February 2017 Cafe online magazine.
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