digging deep: what skyscrapers can teach us about Lent

My travel back from South Sudan included a 17-hour flight from Doha (the capital of Qatar) to Dallas, TX. In addition to watching four movies and doing the sudoku and crossword puzzles in the in-flight magazine, I listened to episodes of one of my favorite podcasts, called Stuff You Should Know.

My favorite was a 45-minute episode all about skyscrapers.

One part of the episode caught my attention. I kept rewinding it because I wanted to hear it again. And again. And again.

If you’re going to construct a skyscraper, the podcast host said, you don’t start by erecting things to reach new heights; you start by digging in the ground to reach new depths. The higher you want your skyscraper to be, the deeper you need to dig the foundation so it can handle the weight and keep the skyscraper strongly anchored to the ground.

If you want to reach new heights, you have to first reach new depths.

And that, my friends, is what I think Lent is all about.

Yesterday I wrote about the desert, the darkness, the deprivation that Lent brings. But skyscrapers teach us that dark depths are not the end of the story! Digging deep, creating space, removing everything in the way of us and the deepest of all desires is the necessary beginning of the story of a soul that soars to new heights, resting on the Rock of Ages as its firm, faithful foundation.