Or Did We Get it Wrong.

We have been the giving up ones, this Lenten season.

We give up delicacies or social networks or, for the superiorly spiritual, coffee. We name ourselves and our positions by these elements of our giving. And we give toward You in glad obedience.

Yet, underneath all these layers of isolation, we find that our spirituality retains its fatness. Our prayer life is sluggish and apathetic, and our hearts corpulent.

And we don't understand. Because we gave up so much. We have been so obedient.

Or did we get it wrong?

We were not the giving up ones? Were we not the ones of whom obedience is spoken?

Did we get it wrong?
Or did You?

We did not expect that, Suffering One. That Self-giving up act You did. That thing of obedience of which we are the benefactors.

We have not lived into our rightly-named selves of mirrored obedience. No, this identity is what we have, indeed, given up.

So would You purge us of these self-granting ways? Starve from us the ways in which we give to ourselves names from which we have been saved. Reorient us to Your Self-giving Gospel.

Make us lean and thin and quiet.

And grant us the courage to be self-giving back towards You. This time, in reflecting obedience.