While visiting another church this past Sunday, the worship leader called Lent a season of "devotion, discipline and deliverance."
Her words gave me pause. In what way can we find deliverance in our denial of pleasurable passtimes or food? Won't God still deliver me if I eat chocolate or watch television?
As I've been turning over these words the past few days, I've come to understand that deliverance is not a once in a lifetime event. As frail human creatures, we are constantly hurt, vulnerable and wounded. We create mechanisms to cope with the cruelties of this world, many of which shield us from love, acceptance and healing.
Lent gives us an opportunity to be vulnerable before the One who kept nothing from us. We give Him our devotion and our discipline, not in order to receive a some cosmic return at a teller's window, but to open ourselves to His heart. We give ourselves time to heal, space to know Him and deliverance from all that has weighed us down.
Devotion: We plant ourselves in Him. Discipline: We water our parched souls. Deliverance: We grow into the beautiful ones we were created to be.
Happy Lent.
Her words gave me pause. In what way can we find deliverance in our denial of pleasurable passtimes or food? Won't God still deliver me if I eat chocolate or watch television?
As I've been turning over these words the past few days, I've come to understand that deliverance is not a once in a lifetime event. As frail human creatures, we are constantly hurt, vulnerable and wounded. We create mechanisms to cope with the cruelties of this world, many of which shield us from love, acceptance and healing.
Lent gives us an opportunity to be vulnerable before the One who kept nothing from us. We give Him our devotion and our discipline, not in order to receive a some cosmic return at a teller's window, but to open ourselves to His heart. We give ourselves time to heal, space to know Him and deliverance from all that has weighed us down.
Devotion: We plant ourselves in Him. Discipline: We water our parched souls. Deliverance: We grow into the beautiful ones we were created to be.
Happy Lent.
Beauty from my sister-in-law's garden.
