THE SPIRIT IS WILLING BUT THE FLESH IS WEAK

Reading: Mark 14:35-38

     Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.  Lent for me is the season of reflection, confession, repentance, and refocusing.  At some point today I will go to a worship gathering to join other Christians in prayer and to receive ashes marked on my forehead in the form of a cross.  It will be a visible and tangible symbol of the one to whom I surrender my life and the one whose obedience makes that surrender possible.

      This occurs during the fourth week of a much-needed sabbatical.  By the end of 2011, I was pretty well fried physically and to some extent, emotionally.  My personal passion was muted.  My sleeping patterns were in great disarray. Physically I lacked the energy to do much of anything effectively for more than brief adrenalin-prompted spurts.  Emotionally I had to guard my attitude and reactions because I was being drained but what seemed to be a constant stream of problems laid on my desk for solving. Spiritually, I had to keep pushing the pile aside to see the Lord.

     The sabbatical has been a good thing for me, not a cure-all, but a good beginning.  Initially, the agenda was simply to rest; and then to exercise and change some eating and sleeping patterns that would begin contributing to a return to health.  It has taken me, however, into this fourth week to see a modicum of progress.  Initially, I had to address the sleep issue because the sleeplessness robbed me of the energy to exercise very much at all.  Then when the sleep started balancing, I found a body crying out against exercise because it was too tight, too flabby, too sore—so that almost any exercise was a source of pain, sometimes spirit-draining pain.

      The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

     That has begun to change, and I will have to keep a willing spirit when I return from this sabbatical because the demands of my work will once again work against my flesh.  But having a glimpse of a better outcome, I intend to press on in this path that God has laid out.

     Jesus, as well, had a difficult path to follow.  In the near term it would be costly and painful.  In fact, it would lead to his death so that we might have life.  His partners had trouble supporting him in prayer because their physical weakness was overwhelming their spiritual calling. Later, some of them, too, would have crosses.

    When the flesh is weak, we need to let the Spirit lead and empower.  We need to keep our lives fixed on the will of God or our weakened flesh will keep us from the purposes of God.  Look to the Cross, its price, its purpose, but also its outcome—and commit anew  this Lenten season to the purposes of God in your  life.

© 2012 by Stephen L. Dunn