Rend Your Hearts: Ash Wednesday Reflection
“Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.”
Today, as Lent begins, the suffering in our world is immense. The needs of our brothers and sisters, both near and far, are overwhelming. The news is full of ongoing war, a devastating earthquake, daily mass shootings, neighborhood fires, and on and on it goes. It is easy to become numb to it all.
It is in the midst of this reality that we hear the call of the prophet Joel, Rend your hearts. Episcopal priest Rev. Borderick Greer explains this Ash Wednesday passage saying that it was important for the hearers of the Prophet Joel to “understand that public acts of penitence, sorrow, and transformation are meaningless if not practiced in tandem with a changed posture of heart.” This Lenten call, then, is an invitation into the depths of our hearts.
Rend your hearts invites us to go beneath the places that have become hardened or numb. It challenges us to allow ourselves the space to truly open our hearts to the realities around us. And ultimately, it urges us to allow our hearts and lives to be transformed by what we see and feel.
The call to rend our hearts is at the core of our work at Solidarity Bridge, and Lent gives us an opportunity to recommit to the heart of our mission. Dr. Paul Farmer said, “No one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.” Yet we know that nearly one-third of the global disease burden stems from surgically treatable conditions and five billion people around the world lack access to basic surgical services. That means a child doesn’t get screened for a heart defect, a mother’s ovarian cancer goes untreated, and a grandfather cannot get the pacemaker he needs.
For the Solidarity Bridge community, the response to this global injustice is not only intellectual or programmatic, it is relational. We are called to respond with our hearts open to being transformed by those we encounter. As we form relationships of mutuality and accompaniment, we discover for ourselves the wisdom of the Hebrew scripture writers who assert time and again “that we are all connected and bound together by virtue of our common humanity.” (Rev. Greer)
Today, as Lent begins, you are invited to take time to read some of our stories – stories of patients in need of medical care they cannot access; stories of medical providers going to great lengths to change the health care realities in their communities; stories of hearts and lives transformed. As you read, remember this invitation: rend your hearts.
Lisandra makes her home in a tent outside the Hospital Nacional in Itaguá as she advocates for her mother’s care.
A dream becomes a home as a team of Bolivian Surgeons builds the only cancer hospital in their region and changes the face of cancer care in the country.
Sr. Zenobia travels by canoe, distributing critical medical supplies from our warehouses to isolated communities in Bolivia.
This Lent,
Let us open ourselves to the stories of our brothers and sisters in need of healing care,
Let us dwell in the depths of our hearts, and
Let us respond in love and solidarity to build a more just and equitable world.