"Surely goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever" (Psalm 23.6 EHV).

The verb 'follow' is a powerful, active verb. We are being chased by God's powerful love. We run form it. We try to escape. We fear that goodness, because then we are no longer in control. We do not trust such a generosity, and we think our own best efforts are better than God's mercy.

Lent is a time to quit running, to let ourselves by caught and embraced in love, like a sheep with safe pasture, like a traveler offered rich and unexpected food. Our life is not willed by God to be an endless anxiety. It is, rather, meant to be an embrace, but that entails being caught by God...

Our anti-lent society gives us many desires. These, however, will never constitute a good life...

Lent is about noticing our blindness and seeing differently. I invite you, during this Lent, to see differently, maybe even for the first time. To see past your anxiety, your greed, your fear, your control. See yourself as the sheep of this Good Shepherd, as the traveler in God's good valley, as the citizen at home in God's good house. You will, when you see truly, be free and joyous and generous, unencumbered and grateful. Desire one thing: God's presence. And you will be less driven by all those phony desires that matter not at all.

-- Walter Bruggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own