For many people, this is just one week among many other weeks throughout the year.

For Jews celebrating Passover, it’s a reflection on the human passage from slavery to liberation.

For Christians, celebrating a new Passover (called Easter) established by Jesus, it’s a celebration of the promise of eternal life, the recognition that death and evil have no power in the real course of events. For both Christians and Jews, it’s a renewal week: A time to reflect on all that needs to die to make way for what lives.

Every human civilization since the dawn of time has felt the necessity to acknowledge the order that exists beyond our own control. The order is everywhere, a sign that the one who created our existence is no simple authoritarian, master-slave type creator. This one is not given to arbitrary, “make-them-as-you-go” rules. There is order, whether we see it or not. No amount of money or human power will change the rhythm of the universe, the tides, the planetary orbits, nor the starting and stopping of heartbeats that God has seen fit to establish (though millions are stopped violently through human depravity). During Lent, we surrender to the order, try to re-align ourselves with God’s purposes, which requires some certain self-renouncements… an idea to which our culture is completely allergic.

This week is a week of possibilities. For Catholics and many mainline Christians, this week comes at the conclusion of a 40-day penitential season. In Jewish rabbinical literature, 40 is a number that signifies a journey of trials and temptations. There were 40 days and nights that Noah’s family endured the torrential rains on an ark (refuge). There were 40 years that the Jews in Exodus wandered the desert, seeking the promised land (refuge) and Jesus himself fasted for 40 days in the desert, where, in his weakened state, he endured every sort of human temptation to renounce his mission, a refuge of universal proportions. It doesn’t matter if it was actually 40 days — the number tells us something about the purpose of the journey. The purpose is there, though our commitment to the purpose waivers.

For Christians, the 40 days before Easter is also fraught with temptations and harassments. It’s a time to examine what trivialities distract us from our journey toward God’s kingdom. We take a lot for granted, after all, since we know how the story ends. Namely, that God prevails.

Christians and Jews believe that God is personally acting in our world. He is no remote watch keeper that winds the watch and walks away. Many people with estranged relationships with their fathers will struggle with the notion of how God is described in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: As a loving father who chooses to love his children. While God is also described in feminine terms, his person is described as distinctly paternal. As I mentioned, this notion is difficult for people who carry anger or disdain toward their own fathers. No matter. Lent is a season to let die the old anxieties, the old stereotypes and negative baggage. It’s time to accept what has been handed down to us as it is, not as we wish it were. (My children understand this concept as, “it is SO not about YOU.”)

The ultimate irony, of course, is that our happiness, as humans, is not at all about us. The more I focus on me, the more miserable I am. The more money I spend on myself, the more incomplete I feel. The more psychological effort I spend on crafting a lifestyle according to my desires and appetites, the more I seem to expect from others.

This is what annoys agnostics and atheists about people of faith. They secretly resent our willingness to surrender to an authority beyond ourselves. No person of faith thinks he or she is perfect. Precisely the opposite is true. People of faith know how broken and incomplete we are, and we know that ultimate happiness is far beyond our own self-constructed designs. Ours is a calling to discern our choices, step forward in faith and action, asking for God’s blessing along the way. It will be what it will be according to God’s will, not ours.

The only assurance that anybody in this world has is that we are not alone and that we are loved and desired. The evidence of being loved and desired is that we were created at a time and location completely apart from our own choosing. Someone wanted us here at this time and at this moment.

The alternative, of course, is that my existence means nothing. That notion is simply incoherent and intolerable to the human spirit. It would mean that there is nothing worth living or dying for. This is the ultimate hell — to be alive without knowing what you would live or die for. This is life without God. It is life without love.

This weekend is an opportunity to claim what has been freely given. Happy Easter. Happy Passover. May you find your father’s love.