Untangled and Empty Handed

Lent is not easy.  It is a time of serious reflection, really dealing with our stuff.  It pushes us to consider things we try to ignore.  Today we lean in toward that journey!  

Hebrews 12:1b-2a

Sin is both a conscious choice and a twisted vine.  What that means is that throughout each day we are given the opportunity to decide, to choose, if we will “pick-up” attitudes, ambitions, desires, and actions that are contrary to God’s purpose for our lives.  The moment we do so, we sin.  There are times in life when the option presented to us looks so good, so pleasurable, so beneficial, that it actually begins to outweigh our desire for faithfulness…and we cave, we give in, we pick up and walk away carrying something foreign to God’s will.  Likewise, it’s not only a conscious choice, it is a vine that slowly begins to creep up around our legs.  We might not notice it at first, perhaps we’re too busy to pay attention, too spiritually lazy to care, too burn out, frustrated, or tired to do much about it.  Eventually, however, those vines become thick and tangled around our feet, legs, and hips… we find ourselves stuck in sin and we can’t even really trace how it all started. 

Lent is the time each year when we back up, take a look and begin to recognize what we are holding in our hands and how tangled our lives are.  It is a time of self-denial when we break away from cycles of self-gratification, self-delusion, and sloth.  It’s a time when we get real, we get serious.  We begin to recognize that the life I am living at this moment may not be in line with God’s will for my life.  Lent becomes a time when we consciously, by the grace of God, begin to drop those foreign items from our hands, hearts and mind, emptying our hands so we can raise them in both praise and need to God.  It’s the time when we allow the Holy Spirit to move in with His pruning shears and begin to cut away the vines that have entangled us.  Lent becomes a time that through faithful confession and obedience that we walk a little lighter because we carry a little less and run a little faster because we aren’t nearly as entangled.  It is then that we step more fully into God’s purpose for our lives.

Questions for Reflection:

1.)  What have you allowed to entangle you?  

2.)  What are you carrying that God is calling you to drop?