“Turn Back, Choose Life” by Beth DeCristofaro
Thursday after Ash Wednesday
I have set before you life and death, the
blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may
live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and
holding fast to him.
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20)
Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes
to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow
me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9:23-24)
Piety
Study
Repent, turn back, choose life, are some of the phrases that
resonate with me as we begin Lent. Take up your cross and follow. These words
always reverberate in my heart. In Lent’s forty days, reminding us of the
40-year journey of the Chosen People saved from slavery, I think of them
taking up their burdens to follow their God. Constant whining and
straying are still petty, human, and personal. God sent manna and quail to feed
them in the barrenness of the Sinai Peninsula, yet I can picture myself
grumbling as I, an Israelite woman, might have groped for my slippers in the
pre-dawn darkness to go gather up the day’s nutrition. “Why is it my job to
always be doing this?” “What chicken (quail) again for dinner?” Taking
up crosses is not my first choice. But during Lent, we focus on Jesus, who
takes up his cross right along with me. I am not alone; I do not have to go it
alone.
Considering the
invitation to return, to repent helps me reframe the idea of bearing a cross. The
bearing can become turning back to ask for the grace and strength to bear a
cross and choose life.
For example, living
with a chronic illness is an opening to take care of myself appropriately and
to accept limitations without forcing my needs on others or acting defeated.
Completing the daily chores of my comfortable, middle-class life I can view as
occasions to thank God for my blessings and practice stewardship of what I have
been given rather than lament the fact that again, I seem to be the only one in
the family who knows where to put clean dishes away or take out the garbage. If
stuck in a dead-end job, I can take the occasion to thank God that I am
employed and be alert to the moments of grace when I successfully finish a task
(whether acknowledged or not), learn a new skill, meet a new potential friend
in Christ among my colleagues. I can refrain from deadly gossip or tearing down
management.
Some crosses are almost
too big to bear alone, and turning back to the light of Christ might be all the
bearing one can do. Depression, addiction, hate might leave us no option but to
cry out to Jesus, who was a friend to the Good Thief. These are not choices I
make, but Jesus chooses to be with me, closer to me than I might dare hope on
the darkest of days. Bearing these crosses with him turns me back to him. It is
a choice for life. I am never alone.
Action
What cross am I bearing? How might I see it anew and use it as a
way to turn back, repent, choose life this Lent?
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