Taking a "Selfie"

 

Have you ever taken a  “selfie’s”?     “Selfie”  is a new word in our vocabulary in recent years.  It refers to the act of taking a picture of oneself or in a group with the camera on your phone.     One of the things that modern technology can do is to “touch up” pictures.   For example, it can take the “red eye” out of a picture of ourself or remove blemishes from a person’s face.   Lent is a time we look in the mirror at our “selfie” and face the nagging realization that we are not the person that God wants us to be.   Lent is a time when we realize that we have sinned against the Lord in thought, word, and deed and there is nothing we can do on our own to change the situation.

Romans 7: 14-25   put it this way:     ¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  ²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!       May you discover again or for the first time that grace of Christ in the days of Lent before us.     Have a holy Lent and a joy-filled week-  Pastor Randy Wall

Prayer:   O God, we know that it is not simple irony that the central letter in the word “sin” is “I”.    Forgive us for the times that we center our world around ourselves.  Help us to know the  forgiveness and grace that is ours in you;  through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.