See, Now Is the Acceptable Time

For he says,

“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way.
(2 Corinthians 6:2-4, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, so I carry the rhythms of Lent in my bones, even though I haven’t given anything up since maybe the 1980s. As you might expect, my unprogrammed Quaker meeting doesn’t make a big deal about Lent, no ritual planned for the upcoming Ash Wednesday.

For nearly a decade, though, I’ve followed my own Lent ritual.

It began with two books by the Washington, D.C.-based pastor Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker and Draw the Circle. The first book encourages people to pray over our dreams and concerns until God answers us. Significantly, Batterson doesn’t say God will “answer” our prayers in the sense of fulfilling our desires. Instead he believes God will reveal what God wants for us—or, as Friends might say, Spirit will speak to our condition.

The second book develops a forty-day devotional program from that premise. I had read The Circle Maker shortly before Lent, around the time I had an unusual experience, one shaped by my lifelong immersion in Christianity. Although I remained skeptical about that experience’s Christ-centered aspects, it did get me thinking about… my purpose, the best use of my gifts, call it what you will. Batterson’s writing resonated with me, and forty days of prayer seemed a perfect fit for Lent, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Each day, I read a chapter from Draw the Circle, then spent twenty minutes opening myself up to whatever thoughts Batterson’s messages prompted. As I wrote, I found key themes, even drawing circles around them in my notebooks. By Easter, I had a clear sense of two choices I needed to make—one of which led to my most recent book, while the other brought me back to the Religious Society of Friends. Together, I believe those two decisions have landed me here with you now.

Anyway, praying forty days went so well, I did it again two years later.

Rather than return to Draw the Circle, I read a C.S. Lewis sampler called Preparing for Easter. I’ve continued to choose new voices each year since. These prayer cycles have seen me through the COVID lockdown, through my monthly meeting’s interminable conflicts, through last year’s election turmoil… and I have to admit I’ve been hoping for some comfort in the present political circumstances.

With that in mind, I’ll be reading the Colorado-based pastor Kathy Escobar’s Turning Over Tables, described in the subtitle as “a Lenten call for disrupting power.” I’ve already dipped into the opening pages, where Escobar invites readers to become “forces for healing and hope in this fractured world,” and it gives me confidence for the month ahead.

I think we can all see our society desperately needs a reckoning with power. Some might say the unchecked pursuit of power got us into this mess. I don’t think that tells the whole story, though. We also need to take into account people who failed or refused to recognize their own power, the potential resistance they could have offered. 

Escobar defines power as “the ability to influence and catalyze through position, value, voice, and resources.” Obviously, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and their minions have acquired (seized, some might say) the positions and the resources to wield power on a grand scale. Furthermore, corporate media has given them voice and bestowed upon them value. I know I don’t have power on that scale; I imagine most of you reading this don’t, either.

That does not make us powerless. 

Friends can “influence and catalyze” our loved ones and neighbors. We can offer our communities hope, and inspiration, and support, trusting in turn that someone stands ready to lift us up when we need a boost. And we can draw upon resources far greater than the wealth or might of any secular empire.

As the Common English Bible renders Paul’s message to the Corinthians, God hears our prayers “at the right time,” and that time has come! (That happened two thousand years ago, you say? Well, what if the clock started then and it never stopped?) If we lean into the day of salvation, as—to take just one prominent example—several Quaker meetings are doing in a lawsuit against the Trump administration, God will give us the strength to push forward. As the fight progresses, we may have to join marginalized neighbors who are already enduring, as Paul did, “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonment, riots, labors, sleepless nights, [and] hunger.” But we can meet those challenges with “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.”

And we can prevail.