Bitter winds and cold met me as I walked into the day; so many challenges, so many concerns, such pressing needs filled my heart and mind. I felt defeated, like an endless addition problem:
1 biting wind
+ 1 bitter cold
+ 2 challenges
+ 5 concerns
+ 4 needs
+ whatever else weighed on me
______________
= overwhelmed
Then something melted in me- whether it was expectation, perfectionism or the need to figure it all out and have a solution; I simply resolved to face the day saying, "I'll do the best I can. It isn't much, but it is all the love and tenderness I can muster."
Funny thing happened~ it was as if God came in like a flood, breaking me open and saying: "Now, this is what I have been waiting for, for you to step aside and give me everything. Your, "yes," your surrender, your will and your efforts. I have been longing to bless and encourage you, but your thoughts and judgments have hindered Me; your way is in My way. My love can finally touch you."
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven , and do not return to it without watering the earth, and making it bud and flourish...so is My word...it will not return to me empty." Isaiah 55:8-10
God's math involves flourishing and mine a constant frustration attempting the problem over and over again getting the same wrong answer. As a middle schooler I refused to believe that (-) x (-) = + For example, -5 x -5 = + 25. "No," I would tell myself; "that is not true, it cannot be, I don't understand." Needless to say I failed that quarter of 7th grade math. We do the same spiritually, holding on to our perceptions when God wants to give us, "new math." We struggle and strive, working at Lent as if what we withhold from ourselves will purify our hearts, when Love longs to hold us and heal us of all that keeps us from Him.
Our equation runs like this: God's equation looks like this:
LENT me
-chocolate + His love
-alcohol + my sin
-dessert + The Cross
-fb - my sin
-tv + my efforts
-other disordered affections - my efforts
(not my righteousness) _________________________________________________________
= God loving me more + a "Good Lent" me + His love + The Cross
God whispers to us:
"I am the Lord your God, and I am with you. I am mighty to save. I will quiet you with My love, I will rejoice over you with singing."
Zephaniah 3:17
Are you doing "old math" or "new math" these days of Lent?
Medicine from Sacred Writings:
"For not by laboring and sweating, not by fatigue or suffering but merely as being beloved of God, we receive what we have received."
John Chrysostom Fourth Century
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