I can’t help but notice Lent comes in the deep of winter.  When the ground is hard and cold.  When trees stand like skeletons stark against the sky.  When a muddied gray covers the horizon more often than not.  This is the season when the green growth of life seems forever lost.

In truth, it is only dormant.  Sleeping.  Tucked away from the harsh winter’s breath.  Underneath the dark of earth, it is nestled warm beneath a multicolored quilt of fallen leaves and the fluffy down of fresh fallen snow.

Roots grow wider and deeper.  Flower bulbs take in the nutrients that will soon give birth to the colors of spring.  Seeds that fell to earth in the fall have burrowed their hulls deep in the dirt to die a martyr’s death.  Their demise is momentary but necessary in order for life to bear their fruit.

Fitting it seem that the liturgical and the literal seasons marry themselves together.  Mirror images – creation and created drawing from the same Source.

In this barren moment of Lent, life prevails.