Taking Time (Killing Shoulds On Lent Eve)

Recreation.

Re-creation.

Take time.

These were the three words I heard while I was in a time of meditation with the Lord this morning.  I had been directed, by someone very close to me, that I might want to go seek the LORD.  Something was pushing them to push me, and I’m so very glad that I did.

Today is Shrove Tuesday which marks the beginning of the celebration of Lent.  It’s kind of odd to think of it as a celebration when it is a time of self-denial through fasting and alms giving and prayer.  We don’t often think of self-denial as something to celebrate, and that’s to our detriment.

I’ve been grieving a lot in the past twenty-four hours.  A personal event occurred that I thought I should be able to handle, but within ten minutes my emotions took over and I was set on my butt.  I couldn’t function.  I started feeling like I was about to get the dry heaves.  I couldn’t handle watching TV.  I could barely handle being around my Beloved or my children because I would just sink into this weighty emotional feeling that made me…well…useless for a time.  

In the past I would have fought it.  I would have shrugged it off and gotten to work, or sat down and distracted myself entirely.  Instead I’ve learned to sit with my grief, sadness, depression, anger, whatever I’m experiencing, in a safe spot and feel, and think, and notice.  We are all too quick to pretend like our emotions don’t matter.  We can pretend they don’t exist, but we can only deny reality for so long before they come roaring back to punish us for such an audacious act.  Why do we do that?  Well, because we are busy.  There’s stuff to do, comments to make, media to consume, things to buy, likes to give out, anything other than taking the time to do what is healthiest for us.  

As I entered my meditation I felt nearly knocked over by a sense of love and comfort.  When I meditate it often takes time for my mind to settle and to “find” His Spirit.  Not today.  I opened my little notebook I keep nearby and words and phrases came to mind, with those three at the top of the page coming first.

Recreation.

Re-creation.

Take Time.

This Lenten season I’m giving up all things online/digital that distracts.  I keep feeling more and more aware of the cost such distractions are exacting.  Between my laptop and my phone, I apparently spend 6 hours a day with a screen in front of my face.  That’s a part time job.  And how much of that time is actually benefiting me?  How much is simply distraction?  How much is taking me away from my family?  How much is it diverting me from things that are eternal?

I like to say that I would like to read more of the Bible, read more books on the Christian walk, pray more, etc.  I keep saying that, “I just don’t have the time,” but what I’m really saying is that it takes time.  

Anything we value takes time away from other things of secondary or tertiary value in our hierarchy of what is important to us.  My children are more important than my playing video games.  Therefore, I most often choose my children.  If my wife needs me, I will not be off watching “The Office” for the 5th time through.  Why?  Because she is more valuable.  That which is of supreme value takes time from things of lesser value.  And this is how we know what we truly value; not what we “should” value or what we “feel” like we value, but what we actually value.  

I hate to tell you this, especially because I hate telling myself this and I inevitably am preaching to myself more than anyone else in the room, but if you don’t pray as much as you think you “should” or read your Bible as much as you think you “should”, then what else is there to say?  That reaction is a warning that things are not as they “should” be.  That’s a symptom that you and I need to pay attention to like the shredded throat feeling that for sure means we’ve got strep.  It means that your hierarchy of importance is out of wack and if we don’t reorder things then it will never get any better.  

Is your “should” based upon the opinions of others?  Or is it a deep seated personal desire, and actually an admittance that things are not as you dearly want them to be?  It’s easy to shrug off a should.  I do it regularly.  “Oh, I felt bad about it”, I tell myself, “so that’s enough to show that I actually care about it.”  But with what I keep hearing from the LORD, that will simply not do for very much longer.

The LORD wants your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.  He wants all of you.  He always has.  This is a wake-up call for any and all who have ears to hear it and mine are especially burning.  

We are anxious for and busy with so many earthly things.  Jesus tells us to not be.  Hyperbole?  Not ruddy likely.  We have set our affections on things that do not last, that do not matter, and will not survive the high temperature transition into the New Heaven and New Earth.  We are allowing temporal things, temporary disposable distractions, to take all of our time and then we shrug at the LORD and give whatever we have leftover if we have anything at all.

The LORD is in the business of REcreation.  He calls us again and again to Himself to make us new.  He wants to REnew our minds, and exactly how is He supposed to do that when we can’t be bothered to show up?  When we treat Sunday Church service as something in the way of lunch and the sport ball game?  We don’t or won’t spend time in the word, won’t or don’t spend time on our knees in prayer, and then we wonder where He is and why we are in such a state?  We do it to ourselves every time.  And maybe when it was all sunshine and roses it was easy to get away with it.  The scriptures tell us to “seek Him while He may be found”, and this keeps resonating in my heart.  That means there are times where He may not be found.  The darker the days become, the more our pushing Him off to the side because we cannot “find the time” will and does seem like abject foolishness.

This is where I’m headed with this Lenten season.

I’m chasing after being REcreated.  I want Him to REnew me.  I’m taking the time from other things that matter less and giving it to the One who matters more than anything else.  I want to walk away from putting anything else on the throne, or even in the temple complex, but Him.  

And I pray that you will do likewise.  

May your “should” disappear, one way or the other.  

I’ll see you on Resurrection Sunday, my Brothers and Sisters.  May we both be changed by the experience.