Lent - A Season To Be Set Apart
Half the bridges in Rhode Island are under construction these days. I’m not exactly sure why. My guess is that some of them have been failing for a while, and the government funding set aside years ago has finally worked its way through the approval process and landed on a few “shovel-ready” projects.
On the one hand, it’s completely obnoxious. Everything slows down. Traffic that normally flowed freely—down Eddy Street, across I-195, over any number of other bridges—is backed up. Makeshift stoplights cause long, snaking backups down the side streets.
But on the other hand, the process is essential. Because in order for a bridge to be rebuilt—strong and useful for the next several decades—it has to be cordoned off. It has to be set aside so the work crews can do what actually needs to be done.
This is a metaphor, a visible picture, of what God often needs to do in our lives through a process called consecration. Paul writes to Timothy:
“Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” 2 Timothy 2:20-21
If we want God to use something, we have to make it available to him. This includes our lives. Consecration is the act of closing down the traffic through our hearts and minds to give God access to use us more fully. We set ourselves aside and apart for him and his use.
Lent is the church’s traditional season of consecration. In Lent we rehearse Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness - an intentional season he set apart in his life to set himself apart for the work of God.
In Lent the invitation is to take parts of our lives that were formerly used for “common things”—like eating, drinking, or watching entertainment on screens—and, through disciplines like fasting and prayer, reallocating our time, focus, attention, and even our bodies to the Lord’s use.
It will slow the traffic down. It will be inconvenient. But if we do this, we are granting God permission to go to work on us—to renovate us, to address the weaknesses in our flesh, to expose and address sin in our lives, besetting patterns of sin that weaken us spiritually and render us unuseful to God. If we will commit ourselves to consecration, God will strengthen us and fit us for holy purposes.
God honors consecration. And he looks for consecrated lives to use.
There is a famous quote from Henry Varley to D. L. Moody:
“The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him. By God’s help, I aim to be that man.”
God, give us that same purpose.
Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England