Monday, March 12, 2012

How can we be holy?


Lent 2012              A Clean Heart, Create in Me            C.S.Lewis
Sunday, March 12, 2012                            1Corinthians 10:12

I cannot lead myself to holiness.  Salt cannot make itself saltier.  But the word holy means that which is set apart.  However maybe we should look at it as those who have set everything apart.  The holy would be those people who have set aside striving, grasping and droning.  The holy would not be concerned with the benchmarks of the world and that idea of success and failure.  The holy would repeatedly give themselves over to who and what God has created.  That is why I think it is C.S. calls it a “terrible thing.”   In our society it is the height of success to know who you are and to be independently able to sustain that person.  How many movies have as their main plot point, a journey of self-discovery?  When a person discovers themselves it is categorized as the happy ending.  How can that discovery of who we are be the ending?  God created us in God’s own image for a reason for a purpose.  A call to holiness is not the destruction of self but the true use of what it means to be that creation of God.  A clean heart leads to holiness because we are able to throw away the clutter that this world tells us we must hold onto.  This holy journey causes a deeper change that goes beyond who we are to who we are to be.  We are not just creatures of our parents, creatures of an environment and culture, products of the chemistry of DNA.  When we choose to be part of this holy priesthood of believers we experience an explosion of what it means to truly be.  It is more than the sum of my parts.  I cannot lead myself to holiness and that is why I must listen to God over self and redirect my heart and life each day.

 Lord, constantly show me the way to you and through you so I can always be, the me you created me to be.  May I produce either grass or wheat, fig or thistle however I was designed  and turn my head from any destination that would not lead me into Your truth.  By your great Love, Amen.

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