Sighs too deep for words

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Acts 2:38-40

Repent.  

The Greek word metanoia is better translated as “turning around” or to “going beyond the mind.” The call to an utterly new mind, to turn around and begin again, is the essential and necessary pattern that insures ongoing spiritual growth. (Rohr)

This crooked generation is focused on fears, angers, judgements; my thinking determines what I will see and what I won’t see, what I pay attention to and what I don’t.  My running-thought prayers are so often fixed on self, not on His grace and freedom.  And His love.  Which is the ultimate Truth, the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh.

Therefore, let me draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. In His love, His perfect love, fear is cast out.

The worldview is that everything out there is against me.  It is a worldview in which we compare, dominate, control and insure.  I am in charge.  I need to be in charge, which leads to anxiety and isolation.  I sort of hate the books I am supposed to be teaching this next school year because they just reinforce this rugged individualism which is the lie from the garden.  You can be god.  

Take control of every thought so you can pray. 

And by resting in His forgiveness, I can truly forgive each and every one, near and far off.  It is not my job to judge.  Rather I shall join Paul, bowing before the Father.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

This was the verse pinned to my bulletin board behind my teacher desk at Grace.  That every day I knelt down and prayed for my awkward seventh graders.  Oh, to have it scaffold my heart and prayers yet again.

Repent.

Amen.