DEATH
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“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience –among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Eph 2:1-3 ESV
As I reflect on death in this season of lent, I return to where death started. It began with deception – deception in the midst of a perfect and untarnished garden marked with wholeness, beauty, light, and communion with our Creator. The enemy of our souls used his voice to lie and deceive humans into believing that God was holding out on us, that a better way was within our grasp by leaning away from God and toward our own wisdom.
Nothing has changed. The same deception lies before us now and encourages us to “follow the prince of the power of the air” into a kind of living-death. This living-death has us grasping for control, admiration, security, power, achievement, pleasure, and more.
And this deception appears to surface from inside of our being. It carries the qualities of being sly, insidious, and slippery. It appears to be leading to life, but we find ourselves instead shattered, broken, disgusted, and trapped. No wonder the apostle Paul exclaims in his letter to the Romans, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24).
Do you ever feel the same?
Death is hard to look at. The dead places in our lives are painful to look at, too. Frankly, we tend to avoid this kind of examination. When the lights are turned on and the dark corners of our souls reveal the dead things lurking there, we quite naturally recoil, hide, and cover up…just like our fore-fathers in the garden.
The next line in the Ephesians passage above is “But God…”
We were never meant to encounter death. We were made for eternity – for union with a loving God.
We know the rest of the story. Jesus broke the power of death and deception over us. His truth is like that light of exposure that lights up the dark, only it is a loving light. An inviting light. Truth that brings freedom.
There are many deaths we die on this journey of faith to deeper union with God. The practice of Lent is like dying to ourselves a small death to allow another freedom in. For reflection, consider these questions:
What part of your inner life might God be inviting you to examine more closely?
Is there a particular freedom you’ve been longing for that might require a death to something else?
I leave you with a prayer by Ted Loder (from Guerrillas of Grace, “My Heart in My Mouth”):
O God of such truth as sweeps away all lies, of such grace as shrivels all excuses, come now to find us for we have lost ourselves in a shuffle of disguises and the rattle of empty words.
Let your spirit move mercifully to recreate us from the chaos of our lives. We have been careless of our days, our loves, our gifts, our chances…
Our prayer is to change, O God, not out of despair of self but for the love of you, and for the selves we long to become before we simply waste away.
Let your mercy move in and through us now…
Amen