Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,
There are recovery programs for almost every struggle imaginable because we have a tendency to lose our way. We drift. We fall. We forget who we are. Because our lives are fragile and fallible. We get ourselves caught in messes, tangled in confusion, knotted up in habits and hurts, and we often find ourselves wondering: How did we end up here?
Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century mystic, once wrote, “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall—and both are the mercy of God.” She names a fundamental truth of the human story: ever since the fall, we have been in a continuous state of recovery. Life itself is a soulful journey of remembering and returning—to the truth of who we are as beloved children of God.
Though we are forgiven immediately in and through the love of Jesus Christ, that does not mean we swiftly comprehend or easily live into that forgiveness. God’s renewal is given freely, but it often takes time for our hearts to receive it, trust it, and embody it.
So, I invite us, in this holy season of Lent, to accept with grace and humility the reality that we are in recovery. Not as a sign of failure, but as a sign of being human. The whole cosmos is, in some mysterious way, in recovery—groaning toward redemption. Though we continue to wrestle with sin and temptation until our final breath, God invites us to live gladly “because of the knowledge of his love.”
When we anchor ourselves in that love, recovery becomes reconciliation. Struggle becomes renewal. And we learn to trust, even in the midst of our healing, that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Lenten Blessings,
Paul+
Addendum:
Though we are forgiven immediately in and through the love of Jesus Christ, that does not mean we swiftly comprehend or easily live into that forgiveness. God’s renewal is given freely, yet it often takes time for our hearts to receive it, trust it, and embody it.
So I invite us, in this holy season of Lent, to accept with grace and humility the reality that we are in recovery—not as a sign of failure, but as a sign of being human. The whole cosmos is, in some mysterious way, in recovery—groaning toward redemption. Though we continue to wrestle with sin and temptation until our final breath, God invites us to live gladly “because of the knowledge of his love.”
When we anchor ourselves in that love, recovery becomes reconciliation. Struggle becomes renewal. And we learn to trust, even in the midst of our healing, that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Peace and blessings,
Paul+