In a broken world, a world in which things do not always go as we wish them to, a world marked by tremendous joy as well as profound tragedy, we humans seem to cultivate an innate longing for control. Why can we not control the affairs of our lives? Why can we not ensure that we are not surprised by darkness?
![Image result](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.jpg)
Lent is one of God's way of telling us that though we are remarkable creatures, seemingly capable of directing the course of our lives, we will never control it all. Lent reminds us that we are finite, that we have limits, that our marvelous attributes can only take us so far. Sooner or later, we encounter a bump: we realize that we are not so remarkable that we in ourselves can decide what we are and what existence means. How can we? We are only us.
We in Lent are like the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog," standing before the world, watching, planning, waiting, bereft, however, of ultimate control over that which we see.
And that's precisely God's point: to live wisely, we must give up. We must give up who we are now to find whom we are, in truth, destined to be.
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