February 16: Let Us Return to the Lord
♫ Music:
Day 3 - Friday, February 16
Title: Let Us Return to the Lord
Scripture: Lamentations 3:37-42
Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass,
Unless the Lord has commanded it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That both good and ill go forth?
Why should any living mortal, or any man,
Offer complaint in view of his sins?
Let us examine and probe our ways,
And let us return to the Lord.
We lift up our heart and hands
Toward God in heaven;
We have transgressed and rebelled,
You have not pardoned.
Poetry: The Garden
By Louise Glück
I couldn’t do it again,
I can hardly bear to look at it—
in the garden, in light rain
the young couple planting
a row of peas, as though
no one has ever done this before,
the great difficulties have never as yet
been faced and solved—
They cannot see themselves,
in fresh dirt, starting up
without perspective,
the hills behind them pale green,
clouded with flowers—
She wants to stop;
he wants to get to the end,
to stay with the thing—
Look at her, touching his cheek
to make a truce, her fingers
cool with spring rain;
in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus—
even here, even at the beginning of love,
her hand leaving his face makes
an image of departure
and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.
LET US RETURN TO THE LORD
The prophet begins a call to repentance with a conspicuous choice; establishing that God, alone, possesses words of power. This is, of course, congruent with the creation story the prophet has inherited. The world the prophet inhabits is one that was spoken into existence. This is also a world where coming “into view of [one’s] sins” reveals the underlying reality that sins are dealt with solely via God’s words of absolution or judgment. Human language can, at its best, only bring a sinner to the threshold of acknowledgement. Once there, we can only wait, straining to hear God’s response. At its worst, human language delays sinners in endless loops of excuses. To this behavior, the prophet asks rhetorically, “Why should” any of us have any reason to “offer complaint”?
Rather than complaining, urges the prophet, it is better to fall silent and put your very body into the discomfort of an attentive posture. Evelyn Williams People Reaching Up pictures an attitude of attention and petition which looks equal parts uncomfortable and desperate. For this attitude of body, the prophet suggests an corresponding attitude of mind: “Let us examine and probe our ways.” The translator’s choice to use a word like ‘probe’, with its connotations of medical concerns, or even surgery, is apt to the experience of straining to see yourself with no self-deception and without giving up. Whether these postures of mind and body precede judgment or pardon does not change the unprecedented psychological and physical effort it takes to shed our attachment to lies and prefer God above all other things.
Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 is exactly the type of piece that teaches us to inhabit a space of confession and repentance willingly, despite its desperate strain on our bodies and selves. Insofar as hearing is one of the five senses, hearing music is a sensation we often deeply feel as though it were in our very bodies. The Piano Concerto No. 2 translates tensions of near-harmonies and barely resolved cadences, woven around a structure of plaintive dialogue between the voices of the strings and the response of the piano. This piece compels us to physically progress through the liturgy of repentance. It invites us to enter and remain at attention in a space where several conflicting feelings remaining unresolved, waiting, resisting the urge to negotiate or capitulate to denial, resisting the temptation to despair and lose hope of God’s pardon, simply surrendering without counting the cost or outcome of our surrender.
Like the prophet, we also inhabit a world that was spoken into existence through God’s Son. And we -- who are inhabiting a world which has now seen the first coming of God’s Son -- we can further add that his words reign over nature and its laws, his words reprove princes of evil into submission, and his words heal our very bodies. But above all this, we know that Christ’s words have the power to forgive sin. Lent is an opportunity to place ourselves at the mercy of this infinite power, circumferenced by Christ’s faithfulness, loving kindness, and generosity.
Prayer:
Lord, we repent because we believe you are desirable above all other pleasures, gains, or distractions. We long to return to you, although we are unsure of what it may require or cost us. Deepen our longing; deepen our persistence; deepen our obedience, no matter the cost.
Amen
Jessamy Delling
Administrative Assistant to the Director
Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University
Information about the artists, poets, lyrics, artwork, composers, and musicians in the Lent Project may be found on the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
People Reaching Up
Evelyn Williams
1981
Mixed media collage on paper
25 x 25 cm
From the start of her career Evelyn Williams has characterized her artwork as a synthesis of vision, dream, and reality. The emotive quality in the simple figures of People Reaching Up reflects that combination of themes and concerns. Yearning and desperate, the figures echo the profound longing and hope of repentance expressed in today’s verses from Lamentations.
About the Artist:
Evelyn Williams (1929-2012) was a British artist who studied at St. Martin's School of Art, and then went to the Royal College of Art in London, England. Williams is regarded as having forged a path for other female artists in the twentieth century. She founded a trust in her name to support artists, particularly women, and the practice of drawing. Her work is found in public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Arts Council Collection of the UK, the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield, the Collection of the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, and the Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum in Wales.
About the Music:
“Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102: II. Andante” from the album Shostokovich: Piano Concerto No. 2
About the Composer/Performer:
Dmitri Shostakovich, Jr. (1906–1975) was a Russian composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet Chief of Staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. A polystylist, Shostakovich developed a hybrid voice, combining a variety of different musical techniques into his works. His music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent tonality. Shostakovich was also heavily influenced by the neoclassical style pioneered by Igor Stravinsky and by the late Romanticism associated with composer Gustav Mahler.
About the Poet:
Louise Elisabeth Glück (b. 1943) is an American poet. Glück is considered by many to be one of America’s most talented contemporary poets. The poet Robert Hass has called her “one of the purest and most accomplished lyrical poets now writing....her poetry is noted for its technical precision, sensitivity, and insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death.” Glück was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003 after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000. She won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2014 for Faithful and Virtuous Night. In addition to the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes, she has received many awards and honors for her work, including the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the MIT Anniversary Medal, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Glück currently teaches at Yale University.
About the Devotional Writer:
Jessamy Delling is an alumna of Biola University and the Torrey Honors Institute. Currently she is the Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. While administration is her job, Jessamy considers writing her vocation. She is very involved at Redeemer Church in La Mirada, California, where she plans and prays for ways to serve in Christ’s kingdom as a writer.