h2odevos encores 031611 Many Happy Returns

 It's been a long long road but I'm coming back to find you

It's like tumbling down Jericho breakin' the walls that bind you

I'm comin' back to find you

I don't know how a true love turns a secret that you're keeping

Maybe it's just safer like a lion when it's sleeping

It's been a long long road but I'm coming back to find you

Took hold of my heart long again wanna be back beside you

It's been a long long road but I'm coming back to find you

One sound came a-tumblin' down Jericho breaking the walls that bind you

 The Music Box by Peter Mayer, Jay Oliver & Chris Walters

Lent is a season of U-turns. As the dust settles while the crosses of ashes have faded away, the words still resonate in my mind,

"Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing," (Joel 2:12-14).

So, here it is that I return to these words read weeks ago on Ash Wednesday. And yet this return policy extends way beyond that time frame. It goes back to the beginning.

I keep thinking about Lazarus. Part of me wants to ask, "What was he thinking?" And the answer comes, he wasn't thinking anything because he was dead. I mean, does one stop thinking after one is only thought of or remembered?  So he's dead for at least four days, and then he's returned, like a book from the library which has expired, renewed in a simple moment, just by a word, or should I say the "Word?"

43"When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go,'" (John 11:43-44).

"It's been a long long road but I'm coming back to find you

It's like tumbling down Jericho breakin' the walls that bind you

I'm comin' back to find you"

I'm learning this Lenten journey, which is partially about increasing physical activity and decreasing caloric intake, that it is really about being increasingly attuned to the activity of God. So it's important to "taste and see that the Lord is good," (Psalm 34). So, in other words, as we re-turn God is constantly turning and re-turning in the holy sequence of lost and found.

I hope today is full of many happy returns.

rtg