Lent - Day 10

     

       Two family members that I love very much had an argument the other day. After a general clearing of the minds, one party noted ( to me ) that if you ever have any argument with someone who is filled with emotion, facts will be of little value in persuading them to your point of view. It is so true. It is akin to speaking with intense enthusiasm to bolster your view and not responding to your opponent but simply being polite enough to wait until they come up for air, then blasting away with your own perspective and prejudices. Really, there is no listening required.

       These type of behaviors are at the heart of the passage this morning. We cannot see the light of so many wonderful things and answers to our professed problems because we often willfully remain in the dark. That is a sentence to meditate on, maybe even enter therapy with. Why are we willfully ignorant? Why do we refuse to see when we are supposedly intelligent and thoughtful beings? 

      I could speak of false Gods and materialism but such willfulness goes deeper than even that. Why are we so wrapped in our own comfy cocoons that are so strong it will never allow us to break free and become that magnificent butterfly God created us to be? Why do we harden our hearts? Why are we a stiff necked people? If you recognize the verbiage, this is not a new development. Our stubbornness and willful ignorance has been around since ancient Hebrew days, perhaps even to the dawn of man. This is a sin we must overcome.

       For tearing down barriers and emptying ourselves of hate and willful ignorance, we pray.

       

John 3:16-21

 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’