Lent...

Lent is underway and the struggle is on.

Now it's not about the meat. As I have gotten older I eat less and less of it and it wouldn't be unusual to go without it for months at a time. But would to God that I could control my sins in the same way, that I would know they, like meat, would taste good at first but then sit in my stomach like a rock. How is it that I've learned that lesson with meat but not with the sins which could kill my soul?

Being who I am, of course, I've been able to for the most part master the appearances and mostly avoid, as it were, what my pride would consider to be the "biggies". But in my heart its another story. There are things inside that need to go, things dark and miserable so deeply imbedded their removal could even damage what little is healthy. I invited them in, or they came in disguised as something else, or hitchhiked their way along, but the door was mine to open and now it looks like they won't leave without something more than a subtle hint. The party is long over but some guests just don't want to leave.

And I don't know how that's all going to work out. I just know that I don't like to feel the way that I do, helpless and under the control of small and vile things. There are times, as well, when I wish that God would simply remove them from my life but there must be something important for me to gain in the struggle.

In it all I gain glimpses of why people of true Christian faith would be unafraid of death because they embrace the release from the struggle against the darkness within and the realization of mercy to come.
And that's where my hope probably should be as well, not in death, not in my own abilities to conquer the demons within, but in the mercy of God that can somehow transform the mess that I've made of things into something good and holy even as I have only a small idea of how and basically no idea of the why.