This is the extra day of February that keeps the calendar, the seasons, and the stars properly aligned. Without leap year and Feb. 29 every four years, we would eventually end up having winter in July! Thank goodness for leap year helping us to maintain order and balance.
In Psalm 25, the lectionary psalm for last Sunday that has been our focus for the week, the writer pleads for mercy and forgiveness from God. That forgiveness will set things right. But the writer also pleads for God’s guidance:
Make me to know your ways
Teach me your paths
Lead me in your truth
God instructs sinners in the way
God leads the humble in what is right
This implies that not only is forgiveness needed for a full and abundant life, but instruction, guidance, and teaching are also needed. That is what gives the balance. Forgiveness cleanses and frees us. And learning God’s ways keeps us from getting ourselves in the same trouble over and over again. Instead of an endless repetitive loop, the spiritual life can be imaged as a spiral, growing and progressing, not just covering the same ground over and over. Forgiveness and learning help us to grow in our spiritual lives.
Let’s think for a moment about how we learn things. I am trying to learn some Spanish for a trip this summer. I am listening to cds. I am studying books that I have gotten out of the library. Claudia, our church nursery attendant who speaks Spanish, is tutoring me. Sometimes I listen to Spanish radio. I am paying more attention to my son’s Spanish homework for school. There are all of these different ways that I am trying to learn more Spanish.
When we think about the psalmist’s plea to learn God’s ways and follow God’s guidance, no one could be against that, but how will it happen? While we may desire sudden illumination, a zap of revelation, or a tidy rule book, that’s not what we are given. We are given life experience to examine and reflect upon. We are given religious traditions to learn from. This involves participation in worship, reading, study of holy texts, conversations with those experienced, wise ones of our faith. Like any other significant learning, spiritual learning takes effort, time, study, and participation. It doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen without intentional exertion.
You may want to take a few moments to think about the effort that you are putting into your spiritual life at this time. What are you doing to learn God’s ways? To receive God’s instruction? To follow God’s leading? How are you being a student of God’s intentions? Who are your teachers as you seek to grow in God’s ways? What can you do to increase what you are learning of God? Lent is a wonderful time to invest more effort and energy in our spiritual growth and development. And today we can use this “extra” day of February to do some extra learning!
Prayer
We are thankful for all that we as humans have been able to learn about the world, about life, and about ourselves. We are grateful that life is a journey of never-ending discovery and growth. May we choose to learn more of God and of the way of God shown to us in Jesus. May we let Jesus be a teacher for us as we learn through life. We have been given so many resources for receiving instruction from God. We give thanks for the church, for our faith tradition, for our ancestors in faith, and for our companions on the spiritual journey which bless our growth and nurture our learning. Amen.
Lakewood United Church of Christ 