Dear Family of St. Luke’s,

Yesterday, Carol and I went to Middlecreek to see the snow geese. We weren’t sure they would be there because the ice was still on the creek basin. Maybe the snow and the cold had set their clock skew. Maybe they would be late this year. Maybe they wouldn’t even come.

At first we saw nothing. Then we drove up over the hill. There amid the ancient, dried, corn stalks, against the sleet capped snow there was movement. At first it was hard to distinguish the forms. The snow and the geese blended so together. This was their way of disguise and protection.

"Look over there," Carol said, "I think that’s an eye and a beak!" "Look over here", I exclaimed, "See the black near their tails! When they’re spread, that’s the black tips of their wings!" Then one snow goose began to fan, about a four foot span of wings, the black a sharp contrast to the white of its body and the snowy background. Finally, with startling suddenness, a hundred geese rose as one, a patchwork quilt of black and white. A sound like barking, rather than honking, it was like a crescendo n a piece of music. All Carol and I could do was tilt our heads and say "Oh!"

To see, you have to look, and to look again and again. It’s better if you have help. Lent is a special time given to us to spiritually look for the presence of God. It takes discipline and commitment. Too often in our busy lives it’s hard to find the necessary time. Sometimes we look in the wrong places or lack the necessary patience. Often, the presence of God is hidden from us in the disguise of successes that we attribute to ourselves, failures which frustrate us, our pride over material acquisitions and chievements, our grief over death, or our preoccupation with outward looks and appearances.

Lent is a time we set aside for our seasonal search – through prayer, and readings, through Wednesday and Sunday services and the Communion we receive, through Friday meditations on Jesus’ "Way of the Cross", the Wednesday dinners and reflections on healing held at the churches of the Western Rim (St. Luke’s, Hope Church, St. Paul’s Manheim and Columbia, St. John’s Marietta), through the ervices of Holy Week.

Lent is a time to look and look hard, so that we see Christ in all the events and people around us. It is a time to look through God’s eyes and use the binoculars of His grace. Then we will more clearly see the Christ of the Cross and we will understand the love, the forgiveness, the compassion that hangs there.

May God bless your journey and especially your vision.

Fr. Pete