Repent, change your ways, stop your sinning now or you will die! What a great story! The best stories are are about sinners who turn their lives around to become as good as saints. God’s Word breaks through the hardness of their hearts. They struggle to turn their lives around and in the end they do something so heroic, so good and their redemption gives us great hope in the ordinariness of our daily existence.
“Oh, wait... Me? Ha, ha, you want me to change? Oh, uh, I can’t right now. Do you know how much work and energy I would have expend to repent? Besides, I’m just an ordinary person. As long as my life continues on the way it is, that’s redemption enough for me. I’m good enough just the way I am, right?”
God wants us to be living signs of mercy, forgiveness and divine love. There is so much anger, violence and anxiety in our world caused mostly by sin. We think a great deal about ourselves and what we want our lives to be and heaven help those who interrupt our progress.
Lent gives a reason to pause and take a good look at our own lives. It reminds us that a different story has to be told and we are the sinful characters called to be saints. In stillness then, in silence, we fast unseen, we put on sackcloth unnoticed, we rend our hearts pleading for mercy from the depths our souls so only God will hear. The story is still a good one. It will inspire others to repent, and we become living signs of the mercy of God in the world.
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