3^rd Sunday of Lent - 7^th March, 2010

Paul’s pew sheet article last week has gripped me. Isn’t it difficult at times to accept that God loves each one of us for who we are? Loving for the sake of loving? As if God can’t help himself; caught up in a whirlwind of swirling life and creativity, at the heart of which is self generating love? We are approaching the resurrection season. Here the candle re-ignites, no matter how much we blow it out, it bursts into light, and life reforms, transformed.

Giving up something for Lent has slowly become a nightmare for me. Years ago, I gave up three spoonfuls of sugar in coffee for Lent and, except for the odd occasion when I make real coffee, I never have it now. I was younger then. I was an eager Christian, frightened of letting the side down by being weak willed, and, so it might have been supposed, weak in faith and commitment. I think I had a greater zeal for giving something up than I seem to have now. What has happened to me? Why am I so reticent to bother too much about whether I can give something up or not? I am battling with another act of personal discipline this year, but there is a contradiction going on in my head, or perhaps, more accurately, an irony!

Every time I do what I shouldn’t do, the incidence of which is lessening by the day I might add, I am conscious of that which, when giving it up, I should be reminded. In other words, doing what I shouldn’t is having the same effect as not doing it. The power of the irony is in the irony!

The level of disturbance in my mind and heart this Lent has taken me by surprise. Battling with my Lenten discipline has created a constant niggle that I hadn’t expected. Giving something up was intended to remind me that I need to pay more attention to the swirling whirlwind of love, and both giving up, and not giving up, has done just that!

Now I am faced with love for the sake of love. Now I am faced with the inextinguishable candle that I know, either by accident or deliberate design, I so often try to blow out and can’t! How do I face the shame of my puff of wind?

With my love and prayer, Kevan

Thought for the Week

Shame?

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