Wednesday Wonder (on a Thursday) – March 13, 2025

 My mother always told me there was a road paved with good intentions. Luckily, it seems that road is quite long.

Sometimes we have expectations of ourselves, and others, that just don’t get met. We have every intention of meeting them, and it doesn’t happen. How do you usually react to that happening?

Lent is a great time to take a look at things like this. Lent is a time for self-reflection. Lent is a time to talk with God about how things might, or should change. And God, if we listen, might even tell us to lighten up on ourselves. However, I personally, never think it is God talking when I hear lighten up and don’t be so hard on yourself. Lent is a great time to work on that too.

We live in a world of high expectation, in so many ways. It isn’t just about how well we do things. There is this desire for everything to be instantaneous and that everyone will be ‘on’ all the time. So many articles are written about how people are burning out at work because their companies or bosses expect that they will be answering emails and phone calls all the time, whether that is inside work hours or outside of them. The natural boundaries between work and not work have disintegrated as it became easier to connect with one another. There was a time your boss could not get you because the only phone was the one on the wall in the kitchen, or on the phone table in the hall (for all of you too young to remember either of these things, ask someone considered Gen X or above, we will explain it to you). If you were not home, no answer. Even if you were at home, someone else might be using the phone and the call couldn’t go through. That doesn’t happen these days. While I am talking on my cell phone, my spouse can also be talking on theirs. You can reach us both at the same time because we each have our ever-present individual phones. Apparently, this is progress.

Some days, it just doesn’t feel like progress. Now, there are people who are quite good at setting their own boundaries and actually use something called Do Not Disturb mode on their phones so no one can reach them after a certain hour, or they just don’t check email later at night, and sometimes, I wish I could be them. But I can’t do it. I am working on trying to not check my email right before bed, so nothing I see there disturbs my sleep or makes me come back to my computer to respond. Do it better some days than others. Yesterday, on the Lenten calendar, if you are contributing the money it suggests, you were to put in some for every call or text you received. Likely, more texts than calls at a certain age, but either one usually gets us to respond immediately. It made me more aware of how often we reach out now that we might not have previously.

This world seems to be expecting us to constantly be connected, not necessarily in a healthy way, to one another. To respond instantly and to get everything done, yesterday. I don’t always feel this as a burden, but there are weeks where it does. Add to this, my own expectations of myself and, well… you are reading this on Thursday.

God cuts us slack at times. God forgives us for not always being the best, or even the best we can be. Life gets bogged down at times. We take on too much at times. Something comes up and takes more time than it should, or than we hoped it would. And God, understands. For many of us, the issue is, we, ourselves, do not.

Lent is a great time to stop. Stop running like a hamster on a wheel, even just for a few moments. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Say thanks to God for being on the wheel with you. And then proceed with life again. Sometimes, that will mean that Wednesday becomes Thursday, and that is OK.

Peace,
Rev. Mary-Jane