Why did the Catholic cross the desert? To get to the other side. Welcome to the wonderful season of Lent! I know, it sometimes feels like the last season of Lent never ended and we are still in last years desert. However, Lent is a great opportunity for personal growth and growth towards God.
During our travels in this life, we will go through many deserts. Some of the deserts are small and we only pass through them for a brief time. Other deserts take a long time to traverse. Most people seem to be traversing a big desert right now. We can bury our head in the sand and ignore the desert, keep walking through it complaining as we go, or we can keep progressing through it, finding new ways to survive and thrive.
We need deserts in our life from time to time. If we spend too much time at the oasis, we will get lazy and lose motivation to improve ourselves. We need to look at ourselves as we enter the desert and figure out what changes we can make within ourselves to not only get to the other side, but also become a better person. If we spend our entire time in the desert complaining, we will get to the other side and find that we are the same or maybe even worse off than when we started the journey.
I love playing games where I can play a character that can be improved upon and “leveled up” as I go through the game. As the character becomes more powerful, they can accomplish bigger feats. We too should always use our experiences in life to “level up” and become better people. As we become more experienced, we learn to avoid doing the things that hurt us and learn to do the things that help us.
We are all on our way to the other side of the desert. By finding ways to improve ourselves, we can hopefully grow closer to God and each other. We all have a light within us that can fade if not tended to. This Lent, try to discover one way to keep that light burning brighter within us.
