Empty and Open by Nancy Leonard

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I was reading an article a while back about why families need to continue celebrating family traditions. One of the main reasons pointed out was that traditions can connect the old with the young and help families remember who they are. It got me thinking about my family and our traditions.

One of my families’ traditions involves an old cracker jar that my great grandmother had. The tradition is that the cracker jar is to be handed down to the first girl born in the next generation.If the eldest daughter has all boys (which my eldest daughter did) then it goes to the first born daughter of the next sister. Anyhow, whether this tradition continues depends on if the future girls in our family choose to continue this or the jar gets broken!! 

Celebrating the season of Lent has been a tradition in my family ever since I was a child. I remember coming to the altar on Ash Wednesday to have the sign of the cross placed on my forehead.  It was always such a huge event for me as a little girl and made me feel very grown up. Even now as an adult, I still feel a huge sense of responsibility.  Lent is a time of self examination, repentance and pray.  I read somewhere that you might think of it as a spiritual spring cleaning – a time to take spiritual inventory and clean out – get rid of – those things which hinder our personal relationship with Jesus and our service to him.

The United Methodist Church believes that Lent is a very personal time for individuals and has no official guidelines on how one should observe Lent. But…… we are not to neglect it! Last Sunday’s insert in the bulletin said this: “Empty out. Open up. Become empty. Make space…..and be filled.” How grateful we are to know that when we clean out the old and get rid of what we don’t need that the Holy Spirit will fill us up.

One more thing about tradition.  Methodists have the tradition of moving our pastors around. We are getting ready for that transition. So perhaps we might continue to use these words of Lent as we prepare to open up and make space for whoever we will be receiving as a new pastor.  We need to spend time in pray asking God to empty out our hesitant thoughts aboutthe change that will be coming as we welcome this new person.
As John 13:20 says “I will tell you the truth, anyone who welcomes my messenger is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent me.”

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