Devotional: Rend your Heart

Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. 

Joel 2:12-13

I hate religion.  So did Jesus.  It seems pretty clear if you read Matthew 23:23-38.  He says of the religious leaders of the day in verse 23 of this chapter, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.  So how clean is the outside of your cup?  My kids are old enough now to help with the dishes—old enough for helping means it usually takes more work for me if I let them.  They often put dishes away without looking at the inside, where sometimes food likes to leach on.  Dried on food is the worst!  I think that’s why on the eighth day God created Pampered Chef scrapers.  Kids walk around with different eyes and they don’t see.

How often do we as God’s children look at the outside and think that is all that’s going on? One of my friends who shares her walk with God through a blog described this same phenomenon:  http://unveiledmasquerade.blogspot.com/2011/06/crazy-hypocrite.html?spref=fb .  Then my kids and I read in Matthew tonight about how those who show their self-righteousness before others have received their full reward (Matt 6:16). 

In my experience when God is speaking to me he tells me many times in different ways.  First the verse from Joel he showed me over coffee this morning, then my friend’s blog post, then my devotional time with my kids.  I don’t like what this verse is saying to me.  I’ve been tearing my clothes and not ripping at the pride in my heart.  Has my faith been an outward show of rule following and Christian-like behavior and not an authentic movement of the Spirit’s change in my life?

I think I would have made a good Pharisee.  I like rules and checklists.  I get a foolish thrill by the accomplishments I set for myself and when I achieve them.  That’s what religion is, being god in your own life and deciding what you can do to be good. 

Today in my class my students dissected seedpods of the Brassica plants we’ve been growing to observe the lifecycle of a plant.  We talked about finding life in dead things, and how a plant has to die before the things hidden inside can spread and find fertile ground.  The joy in their faces as they tore apart the withered leaves was like finding a treasure.   A seed is just a case full of a future promise of beauty.  Jesus also says we need to come like children (Matthew 18:3) before we enter the kingdom, and for me today that means seeing with a child’s eyes. 

I desire to have clear sight, to spot the future joy that awaits relationship and communion with my Savior.  Little faith-seeds blooming and stretching toward the Son (Sun) in the process of sanctification and not the pursuit of perfection.  As verse 23 above says, by choosing to follow rules I have robbed myself and indulged the small-god inside who desires the impossible way of cultural Christianity.   To serve myself is to serve a lie.  It is empty and deceitful. 

So let me see the dirt in my neighbor and the dirt in myself and still love.  Let me turn to vulnerability and not pride as my strength.  Let me rely on a small yet real moment with God instead of formalities and slay my heart raw before Him, like his body was torn apart for me. 

The perfect song to express the things I can’t quite say is Sara Groves Like A Lake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOzUG4dfzsQ . As you listen reflect on your religion and your relationship with Him, read the scriptures I sited above, and journal/pray about God’s thoughts on that…may we find the soft reckoning of returning to the One full of love, compassion, and grace never ending.