Reflections on Lent 2014

My church follows the Liturgical calendar.  Since March 5th, we have been walking through the season of Lent.  I had always thought that Lent, from the outside looking in, was a time to give up something you loved as a way to get a little taste of Jesus's total surrender experience.  And it just so happened that it was right before bathing suit season so most friends I knew gave up chocolate.  This Lent was the first time I committed to practice it.  Even though I have given up certain things, what this season has mostly shown me is that my misled desires and compulsions distract me from life with Jesus.   I just plain and simple still want my way a lot of the time, and I just want it now. When I want to be fed...I want it NOW.  When I want something sweet...I want chocolate NOW.  When I want me teeth straight...I want it NOW (yes - still rocking the adult braces).   I have continued to realize and experience that I can't physically strip myself from these unruly, demanding desires, and it seems like the harder I try the more they follow me.   I have seen how the darkness still surrounds me even when I try to fight it most.  I set up goals for myself, but I still come short of meeting them.  Pastor Chris challenged my church at the beginning of Lent to not let this Easter Sunday be like any old Easter Sunday...but as I come to the end of Lent, I wonder what has changed inside of me.  

Our church has walked through Exodus during this season, I have seen myself so much in the Israelites.  In their spontaneous grumbling right after the Lord had just shown up with provision and deliverance (Exodus 16:1-3).  In the fear, fatigue and disappointment that drove the them to golden calf making (Ex 32:1-24).  Ashley, one of our pastors, said the church set up Lent around 300 AD to remind them that they are people of the resurrection.  But do I live like the resurrection happened or not?  Do I live with God?  I am beginning to see that the doubt and unruly desires that bombard me are not the even the problems that keep me from living life with God, but they can highlight for me what is the problem.   So often, I run to the temporary fixes that never fill me up.  Desire is really a powerful force that can be used to facilitate "agape love that can integrate for us a whole and eternal life with God and man" (Renovation of the Heart p. 68).  However, my partial and distorted appetites focused on getting my way lead me to darkness and unbelief.  And so often doubt starts this process of distorted appetites in my life.  Eve experienced this in the garden when she began to doubt and question what God's instructions were about the trees she could and could not eat from.  The serpent came to her with the question, "Did God really say 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" (Genesis 3:1).  Immediately, Eve gave the response of what God had told her, but the root of doubt had been planted so that when she saw "that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it" (Genesis 3:6).  My questions that begin the seedlings of doubt in me aren't about fruit in the garden but start off more like: "Did He really say He wouldn't leave me? Did He really say He would guide me?  Did He really say He will give me the desires of my heart if I delight in Him?  Did he really say it is better to lose your life than to save it because I really think I should get my way?  Did He really say  He will be the factor that makes you distinguishable/approved, among the crowds because I really think I know best how to make myself distinguishable?  Did He really say "It is finished"...am I really covered?

During our Good Friday service last night for a few moments they extinguished all the lights so we could experience darkness.  In that quiet, still moment, the darkness was penetrating.  I sat there accepting it, knowing that so often I sell my "birthright as a creature in God's image -- a birthright of genuine goodness, sufficiency, and power for which we are fitted by nature -- for a mere bowl of soup (Genesis 25:30-31): perhaps a little illicit sex, money, reputation, power, self-righteousness and so forth -- 'the pleasures of sin for a season' -- for the mere promise of possibility of such. "(Renovation of the Heart p 68).  I think that if the darkness can show us how far we are from the True Light maybe there is something holy and divine about darkness.   During the death of Jesus "From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. (Matthew 27:45).  Right before the  power to raise someone from the death was brought to this earth, darkness covered it.  This gives me hope.  Because this season has seemed pretty dark for me because my junk seems to be the same.
An excerpt from Lent: A Symphony in Three Parts said Lent " is a time to think seriously about who Jesus is for us."  And Jesus the crucified is for me Someone that opened Himself up to receive me to cover me.  And that is enough for me. May I live like it is enough and may I keep coming to the empty tomb saying, "I believe."

The land the you have been promised.

The Daily Office has been taking me through some Old Testament lessons that have been resonating with me in a whole new way as I begin to look toward the new land that I am being led to in this next season.  This week we have been in Numbers reading through the story about the Israelites going to scope out the land (the land was more specifically called by the Lord a land "which I am giving to the people of Israel") and bring a report back to the people.  They went and saw that it was indeed a very good land.  One that was flowing with a lot of good things like amazing produce and vegetation, but it also had some very big people.  Most of the spies came back saying "No way."  According to their human perspective there was no way that they could conquer and overcome these healthy and wealthy people.  Caleb looked through a different set of lenses.  He witnessed the same circumstances but his response was one that basically said let's go right now and take it over.  The Lord delighted in this type of character.  He later said that "my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went" (Numbers 14:24).  But the people listened to the other spies response and once again everyone started to complain and whine.  I love seeing how they immediately jump to the worst case scenario (mainly because I relate so well with that reaction).  They began to cry out with complaints such as these... has the Lord brought us all the way here just to devour us?  It would have been better to have been left alone in Egypt to be slaves than to come all the way here to be devoured?  They were falling back to their old tendencies.  This began with the seed of doubt.  Doubting what the Lord had said.  The Lord had said this is the land "which I am giving to the people of Israel" (Numbers 13:2). But this seed of doubt produced lack of faith in the character of God.  God has promised to be with them.  He has lifted them up and bore them on "eagles' wings and brought them to Himself" (Exodus 19:4).  This lack of faith in who God is, what he has done and what he has promised to do produced cowardly people.  Faith in God produced genuine courage in Joshua and Caleb, a courage that caused them to be unafraid to go into the new land.  Moses plea to the people when he heard their whining was "..the Lord is with us; do not fear them" (Numbers 14:9).  But it was too late their lack of faith brought about wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

Right now I feel like a spy in the new land that God is calling me to for this next season.  I have moved into my new upstairs apartment a stone's throw from Emory, walking distance to the classroom that I will be entering in August.  At this point, it still doesn't really feel real. I can still look at the campus and think, "Really, God, you want me here?"  and this seed of doubt can lead me to a whole bunch of worst case scenarios that are too numerous to go into here.  I look at this new land and see really smart people with mile-long resumes of unique and incredible accomplishments.  I have a tendency to relate with the spies that went into the land and thought "no way."  Thankfully, God has revealed this tendency to me through this Old Testament story.  My tendency to doubt His plans, His calling and His purpose particularly when I look at the land and the people that inhabit it.  This doubt produces such a lack of faith.  I see where the Israelites lack of faith got them, wandering and death in the wilderness.  I long for a genuine courage, the courage of Caleb that saw the mighty people with all their accomplishes and whose response was "what are we waiting for...it is ours to take because of what the Lord has done and said."  So as a way to help fix my eyes on Him and the calling He has led me to for this next season.  I am going to be taking a few blog posts (but let's be honest...it may just be one) to review what I have learned about calling during the search for calling thus far.  I know I will need these rocks along the way over the next couple years.