Lenten Lights V ~ Shattered Visions
“Failure is an orphan until we give it a narrative.” – Sarah Lewis, The Rise
I’ve been contemplating failure. And I’m inviting you to think with me about it. It is not usually a favorite topic, and yet life is full of failures, endings, losses. Visions can be shattered like eye glasses in a busy parking lot. Failure is a kind of shattered vision. It forces us into a new way of seeing. Maybe what we sought . . . turns out not to be there, or maybe we were looking in the wrong place.
The lectionary texts for the fifth Sunday in Lent consider failure at length . . . and death, and loss, and other depths out of which we cry. Sometimes failure is the end of the story. Sometimes it is the beginning. This week of Lent we’ll see what narratives emerge and cast a new light on failure.
