IN or OUT . . . or Half-Way In Between

"But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron-smelter, out of Egypt, to become a people of his very own possession, as you are now." - Deuteronomy 4:20

Dear Friends in Christ -

It's been a long time since I've written . . . February is my least-favorite month, the month I find it hardest to get motivated. The cold. The gray skies. And, this year, the SNOW! But today is the first day of March, and even though there's not yet a chance of crocuses poking up through the snowbanks in my yard, there are flowers on the new page on my calendar. So it's time to start growin' again, time to get rollin' . . . toward LENT (which begins March 9th).

One of the classic Bible stories associated with Lent is the story of Exodus, the story of God's chosen people moving out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land. The same God who rescued the Hebrews from the Egyptians reaches out to rescue us from our bondage, whatever that bondage may be - depression, addiction, worry, negativity, self-recrimination.

When God reaches out to us, we have an important choice to make: are we going to stay IN or are we going to let God lead us OUT? Like the Hebrew people, we rail against the things that hold us IN, but when God starts to lead us OUT, we get scared. All of a sudden, the familiar bondage we are in has more appeal than the uncharted freedom God promises. It feels risky to trust God.

So then we hedge a little. And we end up exactly where the Hebrew people ended up: Half-Way In Between. It wasn't God's "Plan A" to have His chosen ones stuck in the desert for 40 years. But they kept focusing on what they didn't have rather than on what they did have, they kept trying to take matters into their own hands rather than trusting in God.

God wants to help us, but in order for Him to be able to do that we have to stop hanging on to thoughts about how "it was warmer in there by the furnace." Do you know what an iron-smelter is? It's a furnace so hot that it burns the hardest substances known to man. And it WILL consume us if we don't follow God OUT, all the way OUT.

Faithfully,
Janet+