Thursday after Ash Wednesday: DEUT 30:15-20; LK 9:22-25
Both readings bring us to that precarious boundary between life and death, presence and absence.
A quote from Metropolitan Anthony Bloom:
The day when God is absent, when he is silent—that is the beginning of prayer…when we say to God, ‘I can’t live without you, why are you so silent, so cruel?’ This knowledge that we must find or die—that makes us break through to a place where we are one in the Presence. If we listen to what our hearts know of love and longing and are never afraid of despair, we find that victory is always there, the other side of it.