Assaulting questions about the direction of the human race are on my mind this Ash
Wednesday. Am I the only one who believes that as population has increased, so has disobedience to God, making excuses, creating rationalizations, and inventing activities to ignore God.
God may seem silent but he is paying attention.
Not with a stern, wait-til-you-see-what-I’m-going-to-do-to-you kind of attention. It is more a breaking heart kind of attention. More like the attention that comes from a worried, heart-sick parent when the child is headed for certain trouble.
The dismal, dizzying decline of the world thas taken on a life of its own. However, it is a life that God did not create. It is a life that He cannot not bless.
And it breakse God’s heart.
Is it difficult to imagine God with broken heart? God, taking insults, rejection, and a general unwelcome. God, feeling the stab and sting of each derogatory word and too casuat snub. It is not revenge that grows from His broken heart. It is grief, heart-wrenching grief. How could his very own creation misunderstand His will? How could they go off on their own?
Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon, Rome and eventually our own country are all far removed from the Garden of Eden and that blissful, easy, intimate walk with God in the cool of the evening.
As I begin the journey to Easter this Ash Wednesday, I must start with the breaking heart of God. I must become a part of all people who have denied him, unwelcomed him, rejected him, and rebelled against him. I must experience as best I can, the deep, unrelenting grief of God over the predicament of His people. I must cry my confession and own my part in His pain. Not flippantly to get on to the joy of Easter, but soulfully. I must understand that if I had been the only person on earth, my own self-willed rejection was enough to conjure up so great a love as this world has ever seen.
So this is my prayer as I begin this 40 day journey to Easter:
Break my heart, oh God.
May I never take sin lightly
or excuse or rationalize
for cultural, political or personal preferences
that for which your heart has already broken.
Amen.