GOD OF NEW BEGINNINGS, you call us in strange ways, often disrupting our customary life to make pilgrimages of faith. When we hear that call and obey, sustain and strengthen us for what lies ahead. Amen.
– Richard Morgan
Settling In: My First Year in a Retirement Community
(via Upper Room Daily Reflections)
The Lent season didn’t turn out the way I expected. I would have preferred a more leisurely reflective 40 days. But I plunged into an intensely reflective pilgrimage taking me to places I never imagined I would be physically, as well as spiritually. Whether it’s new friends and fellow pilgrims along the way, or risks I took without knowing what lied ahead, all of these became for me God’s call towards a greater unknown, a more intense unplanned for existence, but not without purpose or direction. Suddenly, all the seeds planted through the years are slowly growing beyond possibilities to actualities.
I don’t have any complaints for the interruption or disruption of my original plans for Lent. This Holy Week allows for some long awaited slowing down for recollection and meditation. Prayerfully, I would find more clarity in how all the jigsaw puzzles fit in the bigger picture. For now, I can only rest assured I’m led by the God of new beginnings one step at a time.