I like the word "jaunt." It's fun to use among friends when you're off for a quick trip to the marketplace or a brief walk along the river (Prairie friends: insert "field" or "The Point" where appropriate ;)). A jaunt is a short journey and typically an enjoyable one.
40 days of self-examination, prayer, fasting, etc., can feel like a marathon rather than a pleasant skip around town. But if we think about it in the context of a whole year, 40 days is a relatively short length of time.
Perhaps it's not the length of the trip that matters, but the goal of the outing (though I will ask my biblical scholar friends to comment here on the significance of 40 days---I could do with some reminding!). In the reading from Ezekiel this morning, we find a two-part question that's key in remembering the purpose for out Lenten jaunt: "Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust?" Here God is asking his people to reconsider the cause of their woes. Has God been unfair in placing such difficult tasks in frail human hands? This is certainly a regular complaint of mine, one that I think God (in typical mysterious-God-fashion) answers by posing another question: Could it be that the injustice I see is as a mirror to my own actions in and posture towards the world?
"Are my ways unjust . . . ? Is it not your ways that are unjust?" Surprisingly, it seems that when God's people take this question to heart they end up not in despair, but turned towards joy. When they see in themselves the injustice they see in the world, they find the potential for life, not death.
I figure God sometimes places us in dark passages (long and short) so that our hearts might be prepared for life again, for joy, for that "just jaunt". And like yesterday's reflection, together the Gospel and the Psalm reading for today encourage us that we can take heart, because we find hope in Jesus, who one with God offers us his protection along the way.
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