Come, O life giving Creator,
and rattle the door latch of my
slumbering heart.
Awaken me as you breathe
upon a winter-wrapped earth,
gently calling to life virgin
Spring.
Awaken, in these fortified days
of Lenten prayer and discipline,
my youthful dream of holiness.
Call me forth from the prison
camp of my numerous past
defeats and my narrow
patterns of being to make my
ordinary life extra-ordinarily
alive, through the passion of
my love.
Show to me during these
Lenten days how to take the
daily things of life and by
submerging them in the sacred,
to infuse them with a great love
for you, O God, and for others.
Guide me to perform simple
acts of love and prayer, the real
works of reform and renewal
of this overture to the spring of
the Spirit.
O Father of Jesus,
Mother of Christ,
help me not to waste these
precious Lenten days of my
soul’s spiritual springtime.
Fr. Edward Hays
I keep this prayer poem in my study Bible and refer to it at this time of the year. There are so many images packed within this poem.
One image that catches me is the picture of the lifegiving Creator grasping the door latch of my spirit and giving it a vigorous rattling wake up call. I hear that rattle; I can picture God’s hand on the latch. In particular I do because I remember the aluminum doors of so many homes I have visited. I think of the rusty scrape of the gate latch into our yard when we lived in Minneapolis. I think of the hasp and hook of sheds. I think of the slow swinging gates across driveways on the gravel roads up here latched with a loop of rope or chain. I think of the loud turnkey of the jails and prisons where I have worked. All these have sounds, clanks, rattles, clicks and squeaks. When you hear those sounds you lift your head and listen. I can hear this poem.
I think of the ways God’s hand is on the latch of my spirit and I listen. Might it be an event or a word of scripture? I listen. Have you heard that “wake up call”?
I remember the big brass door handle on my parent’s house, the stiff thumb lever, and the loud click that released the door. I remember hearing that thumb lever snap open in the middle of the night of my childhood and I would be awake. I would awake because I was waiting and listening for it when “I laid me down to sleep praying that the Lord my soul would keep.”
I waited and listened for that latch to click because my dad was coming home that night, and that sound meant that the door would swing wide open, and there would be the bear-hug in the arms I missed.
That experience, that memory, still lives in my spirit as a warm experience of nostalgia, as a metaphor of expectation, hope, and faith. It is a metaphor of waiting. For I know of a latch that unlocks and a door that opens and the fulfillment of a joyful wait. God has an experience and a message of grace to share. Wait and listen.
The church season of Lent is a time of waiting and expectation. During this time we practice disciplines that lead us deeper into awareness of grace and further into appreciation of the renewal God provides. Lent in its original usage means spring. We know that while we are less than a month away from the official calendar start of spring, we will wait even longer on the North Shore for actual spring to arrive. Waiting for the time of tilling and planting can be a metaphor of our Lenten experience.
We know a thing or two about waiting, and hoping. And we also know that waiting and hoping can seem difficult. A friend provided an image of waiting that helps. She said that waiting is “the arms of welcome half-circled to receive that which has not yet come; arms which describe the shape of that which we desire to receive.”
That helps describe my experience of Lent—a hopeful openness and expectation, a time of joyful waiting and listening for God. For we know that the hand of the One who grasps the door latch of our slumbering hearts is the One whose providence and grace already enfold us. And we discover in our prayer life that we open our arms and receive the embrace of God.
O Father of Jesus, Mother of Christ, help me not to waste these precious Lenten days of my soul’s spiritual springtime.
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
February, our contributor is
Reverend Mark Ditmanson of
Bethlehem Lutheran Church in
Grand Marais.
Leave a Reply