Repentance and Re-arranging Ourselves

Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Repentance and Re-arranging Ourselves

Matthew 4:12-17

“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested… ‘Jesus’ left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum… and began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near!” How easy it is to say it, but how difficult it is to do. Sometimes, there are moments in life when we are reminded of our human nature, a nature that is not perfect, but a nature that helps us face and re-evaluate actions that cause pain to others or to ourselves. Most of the time, after we have re-evaluated these circumstances we are invited to repent and ask for forgiveness, but it is difficult to do so. Many of us do not like to accept our own mistakes and try to run from this responsibility.

A few weeks ago, while walking around Virginia Theological Seminary’s campus, I noticed a group of trees that grew from the ground, pointing in every direction but the sky. These trees were beautiful for their unique structures, but it was precisely because of their structures that they all met a similar end. Because their main trunk was anything but strait, these trees grew pointing in all different directions and at some point, when to much weight was added to their structures, each tree would fall down and die. Because these trees do not have the possibility to re-arrange the direction in which they grow, they share a common end.

If we were trees that grew without the possibility of re-arranging our trunks, we would fall down and die, but because we are able to repent, to re-arrange our structures, we are invited to accept our mistakes and ask for forgiveness. God loves us so much that we have the opportunity to repent and to re-arrange ourselves.

In this time of lent, lets re-evaluate our own structures and come to recognize our mistakes. Let us repent. Repentance is difficult only until we take the first step...

Almighty God, help us to recognize our mistakes, but more importantly, help us repent so that we might share with you in your heavenly kingdom.

Mr. Oscar Rozo

Seminarian studying at Virginia Theological Seminary

Grace Church, Madison