Monday in the First Week of Lent
If we have forgotten the Name of our God,
or stretched out our hands to some strange god,
Will not God find it out?
for he knows the secrets of the heart.
Psalm 44:20-21
After spending much of the day on tedious tasks, I learn that I somehow failed to save some of my work and instead sent an empty spreadsheet to my colleague. I still have the data, so all is not lost. But my brain is tired of numbers and soulless accounting; I want to be doing something else, even some other work, anything that brings gladness and energy and a sense of accomplishment. How do I praise God when the work is dull?
Maybe a cookie would help? Yet I know that while that sweet short cut might brighten my senses for a moment, what I need is not distraction but deepening.
I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and intentionally release the numbers and statistics and bookkeeping from my head. I am in need of reconciliation not with data but with God.
And when I set my consciousness to searching out the holy, I find it. I know what brings my heart deep joy. Here, at the beginning of Lent, I need this reminder to forsake strange gods: the god of accomplishment, the god of doing, the god of proving my worth. Here, at the beginning of Lent I need to return to God.
