Grow 12 Inches in Two Minutes!

It's easy to get caught up in the belief that everything is knowable Many folks are sure that it's only a matter of time before philosophers and scientists open every intellectual and emotional door in the universe.

Still, despite what we know, and in spite of our fixation that we can, eventually, know everything we think we need to know, the longest distance on earth remains the 12 inches from the human brain to the human heart. That's where Lent comes in.

Lent isn't just a season in the church calendar. Lent is the time and energy Christians focus on the same questions that bedeviled Jesus in his desert experience: who am I; what am I to do; how can I get that done.

Those questions, and the intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual concerns they raise are issues of the heart. Issues for our hearts because when we take the time to think with our heads: about who we are; who we've let ourselves become; and who we're surely to be if we continue the path we're walking, we still don't know the whole truth about ourselves.

If you want to know something for sure, spend two minutes by yourself, looking in a mirror. The person looking back at you is gonna die someday. And when you can admit that you’re gonna die, you're gonna want to ask yourself, "So, how shall I live?"

Lent's heart time can help you answer that question anew. You could spend some time in prayer - becoming familiar with the person you are who God still loves. You could fast, not to lose weight, or to prove that you can live without chocolate, or alcohol, or nicotine, but to get reacquainted with the experience of hungering, pining, thirsting, yearning for more than what fills your usual bill. You could give alms -not to engage in checkbook mission and ministry, but to ally yourself with those who have no choice about their deprivation, their degradation, or their degeneration into an existence that few of our sated and comfortable ideas of God can console.

If you spend a few minutes staring into your own future - the dustiness that's to become of us – you might be able to not only look passed the fear that imprisons our hearts, but God might lead you to walk into, through, and past those fears cause us to think we can fool ourselves, by foolin' everyone else into believin' that we do pray, we do fast, and we do give alms - so aren't' we special!

If you spend a few minutes staring into your own future, the dustiness that's to become of us – it means you're alive. And when you can admit that you do have a life, you're gonna want to ask yourself, "So, how shall I live?"

You see, if you give yourself a few minutes to notice the naked truth that we're gonna die and we're gonna live - it means that God is bringing you across that 12 inch wasteland between our head and our heart that we spend so much time trying to cover up.

What is the fear that makes the 12 inches between your head and heart an un-crossable chasm? Is it: fear of poverty - of not having enough - that makes you horde all you got; fear of relationships - of having to make room in your heart for another - that makes you wall off your love into so many empty chambers; fear of emptiness – of giving away too much -that makes you gorge yourself with all kinds of stuff, well beyond what anyone needs for wholesome nourishment; fear of aloneness - of not having place, or standing, or status, or legitimacy that makes you crawl over, put down, or shame folks different from you?

Those are big chasms to cross all by yourself. In the cross of Jesus all of our faults are exposed. There can be no more illusion that we're of one mind and one heart. Our schemes to cover the naked truth are exposed. The garments of guile we wear to make people think we have it together are exposed for the rag-tags they are.

Take two minutes today, so you're geared up to grow 12 inches in 40 days. When we do Lent, alone and together, we can remember that there's no chasm we have to cross alone -cuz Jesus already crossed it for us. And now: still able to fool ourselves, we're free; still failing, we're forgiven; still frightened, we're fearless; and, we get to walk along and cross on home.