Grow Up and Settle Down
Greetings, Columbia Seminary alumni/ae and friends. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Almost weekly my wife, Dyann, and I share in some Sunday afternoon cerebral fun and exercise. On the next to the last page of the USA Weekend news insert in the Athens Banner-Herald, there is a game and puzzle section where the Frame Game is found. Located within rectangles on the page are four otherwise well-known, familiar names, places, or sayings in puzzle form. For example:
Figure it out yet? Sure. It’s grow up and settle down.
Beginning tomorrow with Ash Wednesday and running through the events of Holy Week, the Christian community will once again observe the Season of Lent. Thought to have originated in the fourth century church, Lent was a 40-day preparation time of study and prayer for those to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. It also became a call to preparation for the entire faith community including those members separated from the church who were to be reunited.
The number 40 associated with Lent is connected with many biblical events, but especially with the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his ministry. Led by the Spirit, Jesus faced the temptations that could lead him to abandon his mission and calling. Christians today use this period of time for introspection, self-examination, almsgiving, and repentance in anticipation of the celebration of God’s marvelous redemption at Easter, and the resurrected life that we live, and hope for, as Christians.
In light of the above puzzle, perhaps the Lenten journey could also be thought of as God’s gracious calling to each of us into higher places of Christian maturity. Further developing, ripening, growing up into Christ, we begin to settle down into the more composed, stable, and ordered life of Jesus’ disciple. Grow up and settle down: For me, it’s an old familiar notion that now has fresh new meaning.
I really like Eugene Peterson’s Message version of Lent 1 Psalm 25, especially verses 12-13 . . . David’s conversation with God.
My question: What are God-worshipers like?
Your answer: Arrows aimed at God’s bull’s-eye.
They settle down in a promising place;
their kids inherit a prosperous farm.
No matter how we frame it, with you I am glad to claim it more as promise than as puzzle.
Randy Calvo Jr. '81