Here we are, the day after the second Sunday of Lent.  By now, the faithful are well into their Lenten pursuits, steadily and patiently striving to relinquish control over various areas of their lives and to set their days into a larger compass of understanding.  As they should:  giving up is the essence of being human.  If we try to control everything, we will inevitably end up creating a world of us and us alone, a world without any real point except poor little us.
     Granted, we ought to control some things.  When we strive to control everything, however, we will eventually realize that we have not succeeded in controlling anything. We reduce ourselves to a collection of atoms spinning in a nexus of space and time, avoiding everything but ourselves.  And who are we?  We will never be any more than our limits and possibilities.  Lent is God's way of telling us that though we are remarkable creatures, we err in supposing that we are so remarkable that we can decide what it means.  How could we?  We are only us.
     We're just visiting the planet that God made and, one day, we will see things as they are really meant to be.