Lent 5 | Riven
The Word
“I will tend My flock and make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the broken, and strengthen the weak.
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead…But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. ”
The Wondering
riven: split, cloven, rent, torn asunder, broken, distressed
Life in this world is a “riven thing” for the many who live among cracked and distressed countries, families, selves, dreams. The poet promises that God goes into it, belonging. This Lent may we reconsider our understanding of “healing” and “wholeness” as we ponder the inevitable learning that a fairy tale ending, completion, closure, is rare.
Yet God gives us an abundance of beginnings – beginnings that happen in the middle of things, sometimes in moments when we trip on the potholes and fissures that lie between morning rush hour and the return home. Hurrying on our way from Jerusalem to Jericho, we are likely to see “a man lying by the side of the road” and discover ourselves at the beginning of another story. Which might be a parable.
As this Lenten journey wears on, let us look for that “storm of peace” to come upon us: a moment of rest that doesn’t depend on resolution but on trust that can give us courage to set out, again, even when the road is riddled and riven.*
*Richard Baxter in John Baillie’s A Diary of Readings, Day 310
The Wisdom
“Every Riven Thing” by Christian Wiman
God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why
God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where
God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.