By Emily Burns

Psalm 62: 5-8, 11
“Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I will not be shaken. My salvation and glory depend on God, my strong rock. My refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before him. God is our refuge. God has spoken once; I have heard this twice: strength belongs to God.”

One of my favorite authors, Kate Bowler, describes Lent as a time when, “We ask God to show us the world as it is. We begin with the reality of our finitude rubbed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday...then we walk through that reality in a kind of dress rehearsal. It’s the downward slope of God-the Great Descent, where the whole church walks toward the cross. A time when we all get a minute to tell the truth: Life is so beautiful and life is so hard. For everyone.”

Lent is a season of grief to acknowledge Christ’s sacrifice and the reality of our suffering. We live within the sacred tension that “life is so beautiful and life is so hard.” We know Easter is on its way, but we sit with the brokenness of the world as we wait. We cannot ignore it. We sit with the grief of more than 800,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States and more than 5 million worldwide. We cannot look away from the reality that even before the pandemic, 1 in 4 households experienced a major form of economic hardship and that number rises to 1 in 2 for Black and Latinx households. Many of us have felt the toll that this pandemic has had on our mental health. We are experiencing more anxiety and depression than before the pandemic but struggle to access adequate mental health care. The list goes on and on. COVID-19 has exposed the gaps in society’s systems, and those who have been the most deeply affected have been the most disadvantaged.

We sit here with the reality that the world is not as it should be. People are hungry, grieving, scared, and sick. As the “end” of the pandemic is declared to be nearing, some of us may wonder why we do not feel relief. We have all been going through a collective stressor. As we are finally coming to the point where we can breathe, the reality that is our changed world and all that we have experienced feels like it is crashing down upon us. Many of us are grieving the loss of loved ones while others may be feeling the exhaustion of being both a parent and teacher to children. Some have lost their jobs and others are managing the effects of Long Covid. Whatever your experience has been, life feels unbearably hard for many of us and it can be hard to hope. 

This Lent, I will look for God to meet me in those places of despair, helplessness, grief, sorrow... I will “find my rest in God alone and remember that my hope comes from him.” I may not get the easy solutions and answers I want, but I receive God’s presence within the unresolved. That presence gives me the strength to continue to seek justice and work toward systems that care for the most vulnerable. Rachel Held Evans writes that “sometimes we are closer to the truth in our vulnerabilities than in our safe certainties.” This Lent, may you encounter God in your vulnerabilities, in your grief, and in your sorrow. May “the strength [that] belongs to God,” sustain you as you seek justice and make change. 

You make our collective work possible by your witness for justice every day in your church, community, and Annual Conference. MFSA does not receive any financial support from the United Methodist Church's giving channels. 100% of our budget is funded through your membership dues and your generosity in giving.

Emily Burns is the Development and Communications Coordinator at MFSA. She served in Michigan as a Global Mission Fellow US-2 through the UM General Board of Global Ministries from 2018-2020. Currently, Emily is pursuing a Masters degree in Clinical Social Work.