The Point of Breaking (Lent)

 Lent is a time of stretching – testing – trial.  A time in the wilderness.

Traditionally, we fast (resetting our relationship with our self), pray (resetting our relationship with God) and give alms (resetting our relationship with our community.  We withhold comforts. We push our bodies.  We gain a healthy dose of suffering.  We stretch our time and energy – can I really pray three times a day?  What about 100?  We stretch our pocket books… well… do we?? Do we stretch our finances like we stretch our hunger (a question for another time)?

We stretch, bend, push, embrace discomfort, challenge our routines – but do we ever truly reach the point of suffering?  Do we need to?  Is that important?

Before he began his official ministry, the story goes that Jesus went to the wilderness to be tempted and tried - forty days of solitude and fasting. Whether forty days “literal” or forty days “symbolic” (health professionals will advise you not to go forty days without food unless you are medically supervised), it was a time of deep physical discomfort and mental and spiritual exertion.  Forty days calls us back to Noah’s time on the ark during a tremendous storm.  Forty days tells us, the reader, that a cycle of judgement and purification has been completed. 

Create in me a clean heart, oh God (Psalm 51:10)

In the midst of this trial, Satan comes to Jesus to twist reality and to cause Jesus to stumble.  Satan incites Jesus by tempting him where he is most vulnerable.  Grasp relief from your physical discomfort.  Quiet the noise of your need.  See if God is really trustworthy.  Test how important living is. Gain the quick victory. Claim your prize now without having to trod this long, uncertain, and inconvenient path. Satan – the deceiver – used partial truths and attractive escapes to tempt Jesus.  But Jesus had open eyes and measured wisdom.  He managed to see through the mirage to the ugly reality.  Jesus also knew the value of walking the whole path, even through the valley of suffering.

Can we hope to be as regal?  In a weakened state, can we choose harder, longer, and more painful?  Can we cling to the scorching truth while someone dangles a condense-ing cup of cool water before us?  Oh I pray that we find the strength!

‘We can do hard things’ rings true.

But truer still – we can choose hard things.  We can choose the harder, longer, more expensive, emotionally charged, financially foolish, inconvenient, inefficient, socially damaging, embarrassing, awkward, squirmy, terrifying path.  These are the qualities of the Kingdom of God!

And Lent is the season to make yourself RAW again.

Let it break you open, drain you out and flood you with new resolve. Right to the breaking point – where you are face to face with your heart’s desires but you know they are corrupted (not true) and you shout “Away from me deceiver!” There is only one God and I am not that one! (Matthew 4:10)

What a beautiful place to find yourself – passing through suffering and standing firmly on truth and identity.  Amen. May it be so.

When you come to the end of “yourself,” anything beyond that is God’s strength and ability (RK).

But even the strongest bow will break with repeated bending.

Humans are not God. We cannot go on endlessly sustaining all things in all places at all times. We exist within laws of time and space. The limits have fallen in pleasant places (Psalms 16:6). God modeled a 7^th day Sabbath for humans.  And, even in the stretching and pressing of Lent, we rest; we Sabbath.

If we continue to bend our bow.  Or – even worse – if others compel us to continue to bend our bow without Sabbath.  We will break.

Yet…

The pushing and bending brought by a breeze signals the tree sapling to build a thicker trunk and deeper roots.  These externally created movements guide the internal strengthening and growth from sapling to tree.

A blacksmith will heat metal to allow shaping (without cracking and breaking).  The hammer strikes the tool to shape it.  The cycles of heating and cooling add strength and toughness.

The weathering of a mountain range makes the mountains smaller overall, but the rock that remains is the hardest, toughest and, usually, smoothest rock within the mountain.

These processes are natural and necessary.  Stretching, bending, building, wearing, exposure to stress – but NOT breaking – bring beautiful maturity.

So, is suffering necessary? I want to say, “yes.” But I am afraid of the implications.  Certainly, let us be like King David when forced to choose a consequence for unlawful action in 2 Samuel 24, chose to fall into God’s hand rather than to be subject to human persecution (2 Samuel 14).  Let our “yes” to suffering be a release into the hand of a mighty, but merciful, God. 

May your Lent break you in all the right ways.

Amen