Each year when March comes, I anticipate that somehow the arrival of the spring equinox will coincide with the arrival of warmer weather. Maybe, just maybe, I can start to plant some early spring seeds. I am continually disappointed in the lack of a match between my ideas about the calendar and the reality of the world, as we continue to get snow through March and sometimes even into April. (I write these columns in advance, and even as I write, I think, But maybe this year will be different!)
Our prayer lives can also at times feel frozen or out of sync with the liturgical season. Perhaps we find that prayer is dry and expect that if we just pray a little harder, somehow things will be different. Or I might expect to feel joy at Easter, but the world around me still feels as though it is back at Ash Wednesday when I see a world in need of healing and redemption. I desire to get my feelings to align with the calendar or with my own expectations about how God will be with me in prayer. If a particular psalm has been consoling in the past, I might try to go back to it and be disappointed when consolation does not come, and prayer continues to be dry. God is doing something different, and it’s not in my control.
Sometimes the challenge is just allowing God to be with us where we are, whether that is staying with dryness, feeling grief at the suffering of the world, or noticing that God consoles in an entirely different way than that to which we are accustomed. Perhaps we are used to experiencing deep peace in centering prayer and find that now, instead, praying with Psalms offers us more of a connection to God. Or maybe quiet time spent alone with God produces little other than distractions, but I sense God’s presence in my work and in the relationships around me.
We are not in control of how our prayer goes or what God is doing with us at any given moment, any more than we are in control of the weather or the calendar. However, we can do our part, which is to show up, be attentive, and be willing to stay with whatever God is doing, as mysterious as it may be. We can trust that later, there may be flowers or some new way of encountering the Lord. We can trust that God is there, as surely as we can trust that one season follows another, year by year.
