Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Luke 9:18-25

Choose life.  But how?

American culture is full of advertisements that encourage us to choose life - through bigger cars, bigger meals, bigger houses.  Choose "the good life," and don't forget the beer.  The message is twisted to serve something less than life, but the ads speak to our deep desire for fullness, meaning, connection.  We desire life.  But what is that life?

The passage from Deuteronomy assures us that life means prosperity.  If we turn from God, we will find ourselves without what we need to flourish and thrive.  The choice seems clear.

Jesus, however, muddies the waters.  The King of Paradox, he tells us that the path to life leads through death, that we must lose our lives to save them.  What does it mean, then, to choose life?

As we begin our Lenten journey, we set out on a road whose signs are radically different not only from contemporary culture, but from our basic animal instincts.  The animal in me knows warmth, and comfort, and company are good, and loss, danger, and pain are bad.  Jesus asks us to choose the hard road anyway, not to escape our animal selves but to carry them to a place they would never choose.  We don't know where we're going, or what the road looks like, but Jesus says it doesn't look like we expect life to look.  We are going to have to work to spy out life on this journey, right up to the tomb.  This will take faith - faith that Jesus is not a crazy man, faith that God loves us in leading Her people through hard and scary places, faith that the promise is real.

Choose life.  Choose the hard road that leads somewhere amazing.   Pick up your cross, whatever it is today, because it's the only way to get down the road.