Fifth Lent

John 12: 24

Jesus said, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.”

Talk shows have become a staple of Australian daytime television, for better or worse. Some try to gear themselves toward helping people help themselves. At the other end of the spectrum are those shows that try to show people at their titillating worst.

Many talk shows feature families being reunited. Sometimes it is a mother who was forced to give up her child and has not seen that child since birth. Others feature siblings who have been separated at an early age and raised apart from each other. They are brought together on television for what the producers hope will be an emotional and dramatic reunion.

But it does not always turn out that way. Sometimes the children resent the parent’s intrusion into their lives. Often we witness a child become angry or confused when they’ve been told for the first time that they have siblings they did not know about. The saddest cases are the ones that after a tearful on-the-air reunion realise their lives are so different that there is no need to stay reattached or to develop a relationship.

Lent reunites us with our loving God not in some artificial or forced way, but in a covenant than can bind us together forever. But that will happen only if we choose to accept that relationship with God and allow it to develop. Let us not risk straying too far away to be able to follow God and God’s plan for us.