Lent 2014 – Devotion 15

My husband’s cousin announced on Facebook that she is doing some kind of 40 bags in 40 days de-cluttering program for Lent. The program she refers to is really more about spring cleaning than about Lent or religion. And, actually, spring cleaning has been part of Lenten discipline in some corners of the church. This involves the association between ridding your house of dirt and cobwebs, etc. and ridding your spirit of evil and sin.

In thinking about the 40 bags of clutter, I thought about how we are told that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days with little more than the clothes on his back. In fact, he never owned much more than that. There is freedom in that kind of material simplicity. Travel experts talk about heading to Europe for 2 weeks with 8 garments. It makes things easy to be so unburdened. But why consider this just for a trip? Why not think about living like this all of the time? Less to take care of. Less to tie us down. More time and energy to spend time with friends and family and contributing to the community. As someone who dreads putting the laundry away because the clothes won’t all fit in the drawer, this kind of simplicity has an appeal.

And while we are thinking about “traveling light” what about the burdens that we carry internally? The hostilities, regrets, broken dreams, hurt feelings, grievances, and so many other things, that weigh us down spiritually and emotionally. What freedom there can be in releasing that clutter! Jesus learns about this in the wilderness, too. How to stay focussed. How to release what holds us back from the freedom God is seeking to give us.

Hopefully in this Lenten season we can create some space in our lives by doing some de-cluttering – physically or spiritually or both!

Prayer: In the story of Mary and Martha, Jesus tells them that one thing is needful. Can it be true that we really only need one thing? May we accept God’s love to sustain us and help us to grow. May we trust that love to cast out the fear in our lives and everything else that holds us back from being filled with God’s love and light. May we accept the call to material simplicity as the gift that it is rather than as a sacrificial burden. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” We pray for the will to let grace free us from all that fetters. Amen.