A Season For the Spirit: The View from Jericho

Spirit of truth, you know me intimately, you alone know what barriers to truth in me are ready to come down now so that i can enter more freely into the reality of God than ever before. Give me perseverence in my prayer and reflection day by day this Lent so that when the time is ready these barriers may give way like the walls of Jericho.
- Martin L. Smith

It is Ash Wednesday. Here we stand at the beginning of another Lent. Each of us are at a certain spiritual point in our life journey. As Martin Smith says, "Perhaps I have made progress since this day last year, wandered, or hung back. But we are invited to make our annual pilgrimage to the same place, a certain common point for starting over again." The common place is found in the New Testament where Jesus is baptized and then driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus' 40 days had begun.

We all are invited to this place. It is the beginning. Join the many who will take it upon themselves to recognize the Spirit driven journey that even Jesus had to endure. Let us get caught up in it. The Spirit desires that each of us be driven into a type of wilderness so that we can see truth for what it really is...an event...not a thing.

But don't try to take on this journey on our own. We will surely get lost in misinterpretation, well-intentioned motives, or pride. The Spirt must not only lead. We need the Spirit to drive us.

So Smith encourages us to lay down our resistance to the one who 'loves me infinitely more than I can guess, the One who is more on my side than I am myself." God truly knows us more than we know ourselves. In fact, the way to discover who we truly are is to discover ourselves in Christ.

Maybe the thing I should be giving up is...control itself. I must find an area in my life where I can lose control. Instead of giving up chocolate, or red meat, or sodas, or TV; maybe I should consider giving up what gives me security in my work day. That is, to sit down immediately and try to get work done efficiently so that can make sure that I am in control of my surroundings.

"Deliberate efforts to impose discipline on our lives often serve only to lead us further away from the freedom that Jesus attained through surrender to the Spirit, and promised to give." Amazing isn't it? It is going to take a lot of discipline to avoid imposing disciplines!!!

So what is the answer if not found in the mere act of giving something up or acquiring a 40 day discipline into our already busy lives?

Lent is about the freedom that is gained only through exposure to the truth.

And truth is not a thing...it is an event. Truth happens to us. Truth takes place. Truth is like a treasure that is found only when all the other junk is stripped away and what is real "emerges into the open."

It is Ash Wednesday and a great journey lay ahead.