Lent Day 25: The Chains of the Familiar, the Promise of the Unknown

"Man craves winter in summer, and when winter comes, he likes it not,

For he is never content with any state [of things], neither with poverty nor with a life of plenty.

May man be killed! How ungrateful he is!

Whenever he obtains guidance, he spurns it."

— Rumi

Rumi might’ve said it centuries ago, but the man really understood human behavior. Just look around.

We live in a country where people are more concerned with billionaire tax cuts than with feeding kids, funding schools, or supporting the health and dignity of the most vulnerable. We’ve got folks out here defending billionaires like they’re going to magically get added to a will if they tweet hard enough. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans are two paychecks away from financial catastrophe, not a vacation home in Aspen.

We are not okay.

And yet, the headlines keep coming: Egg prices are still wild. The country is fractured. Corey Booker filibustered for over 25 hours. Val Kilmer, our beloved Iceman, passed. A certain billionaire tried to buy a State Supreme Court seat—and lost, but barely. Meanwhile, banks are raising fees, and our accounts are shrinking, but corporate profits keep climbing.

It’s a mess. A full-blown, exhausting mess.

We’ve been through enough to know this: economies will always matter more than human lives to the people in power. It’s been that way since the beginning. The only difference now is we have TikToks to capture it in real time.

But here’s the thing—we’re still writing the story. And I want to believe the ending is up to us.

I keep coming back to the Exodus story. When Moses led the people out of Egypt, they weren’t taken directly into freedom. They didn’t get a welcome parade into the Promised Land. God made them wander in the desert for forty years. Why? Because they still had the chains of Egypt wrapped around their minds.

They knew oppression. They knew control. They knew what it meant to survive under Pharaoh’s thumb. Freedom? That was terrifying. It was unfamiliar. Risky.

So they wandered.

A whole generation lived and died in that desert. Not because they were lost—but because they weren’t ready. Because even though they were no longer enslaved, they hadn’t yet learned how to be free.

And I can’t help but feel like we’re living in a kind of wilderness right now. A national, spiritual, political, economic wilderness. We say we want change, but we’re scared to let go of the broken systems that made us feel safe. We want justice, but only if it doesn’t disrupt our comfort.

We long for the “normal” of before—but what if that “normal” was Egypt?

The truth is, we can't go back. And we shouldn't. Because if we do, we’re just wrapping the chains tighter and calling it nostalgia.

I see people resisting. I see folks pushing back against fascism, fighting for trans lives, for reproductive justice, for Black and Brown liberation. They’re not trying to bring back the past—they’re building something new. Something better.

I want to believe in that future. I want to walk toward that Promised Land, even if it means wandering a while. Even if the path is hard. Even if I don’t get to see it fully realized in my lifetime.

Because maybe the work we do now—the struggle, the questions, the resistance—is for the next generation. So they won’t carry our fear. So they won’t inherit our silence. So they’ll get to enter the Promised Land unbound.

Lenten Reflection: Wilderness is a Place of Becoming

📖 "The Lord said, 'I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out... and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them... and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

— Exodus 3:7–8

Lent is not about quick fixes or easy answers. It’s a time of stripping away, of confronting the wilderness within and around us.

🔹 Where am I still clinging to Egypt—what feels familiar, even if it’s harmful?

🔹 What comforts have I confused with safety?

🔹 How can I begin to live like someone who believes the Promised Land is still possible?

This Lenten season, may we wander with intention. May we loosen our grip on what was, and trust the journey toward what could be.

Take care of yourselves. And take care of each other.

📖 Read more reflections at flanneldiaries.com

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