I know that’s bad grammar but at the beginning of this
Lenten season that calls us to think about sacrifice – The Lord’s sacrifice for
my, our sin – I was pondering again my own relationship with and
understanding of God. The morning
devotional that I read focused on “the fall”, so that led me to thinking about
sin, the falling away from God’s standard.
My thoughts have been tumbling over each other as I considered the
meaning of sin and its impact on our world and on me.
Adam and Eve’s sin was not in what they ate, but in their
desire to be like God, to be equal with God, to know as God knows. In one sense, they got their wish. The couple could see and recognize sin in
themselves, and they tried to cover it.
Whether you believe this is literal or figurative, the message is clear –
human kind who are honest with themselves recognize that sin and evil exist
within their kind and within themselves.
My mind called up an early memory verse, Romans 3:23 – For all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God. Years of preaching and
teaching crowded for brain space, but what happened was that I started thinking
about the glory, majesty, holiness, perfection, beauty, love and yes, the grace
of God. And I was reminded again that
neither I nor anyone can achieve one of those as that characteristic is
possessed of God. I, we fall short. We miss the mark, fail to achieve the
standard, especially when we define the standard as Jesus did – loving our
enemies, doing good to those who despise us, forgiving those who owe us without
grudging…the list goes on. Were it not
for His grace, I would be lost. That is the beginning of the focus on Lent. The focus in the end will be those events that secure my hope for a way to be acquitted since my best efforts will continue to fall short of God’s standard.
Through the years my religious heritage has moved away from
not even considering Lent except as something strange that others observed, to
a greater understanding of the value of reflection prior to the highest holy
time – when God Himself paid the price He demanded for our sin.
Several years ago, a church I was part of asked people to
volunteer to write a devotional for Lent, and that was my first experience with actually
observing Lent in any way. In privacy
the last few years I have given up something during Lent with the purpose of
understanding in some miniscule way, what Jesus did not only on the cross, but
as He prepared for ministry spending 40 days in the wilderness. Each year it has been something God was convicting
me of, but no conviction came this year until I was challenged to blog about my
thoughts today.
I attended an Ash Wednesday service last night with my
daughter and her family. The Pastor spoke
of the sacrifice of giving up and the sacrifice of giving or doing
something. This morning as I wrote this,
I realized what I am to do, for myself, and for those of you who might choose
to read what I write, my Lenten devotional is this: to reflect each day, a
little or a lot, on the thoughts that tumbled through my mind this morning and the meaning of this most treasured of Christian seasons.
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