"Picking Up" or "Dropping Off"
Devotion for Feb. 29,-March 6, 2004
By: Greg Wingo, Pastor
Harlan UMC
Harlan, Ky.

We are a people always on the go. Drop the kids off at school, go shopping at various stores (picking up items at each stop), going back home and unloading before going back out to pick up the kids and drop them off at ball practice, cheerleading, piano, gymnastics, dance, academic team, work, friends, etc., etc., etc.. The list never ends. We are always picking up or dropping off!

Even in our personal lives this pattern holds true. Our work evolves as we change jobs, positions, or responsibilities. Our co-workers change, our customer-base expands or contracts, our enthusiasm may ebb and flow. Relationships are constantly changing as people move in and out of our lives because of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, moves, or change of interests, just to name a few.

Our lives have been shaped, changed, and even altered greatly by events or memories of our past. The emotions that are linked to those memories are constantly rekindled by similar experiences. But as God's healing grace works to move us beyond those events, we may be able to leave behind the bad, or at least use those events in a positive way to minister to others.

That is what the Season of Lent is all about. It is the time leading up to Easter. Traditionally, it is a time for believers to reflect, to repent, and to remember the example of Jesus as He journeyed towards the cross. Many use this period as a time of self-denial, refraining from pleasures or luxuries (coffee, soda, sweets, television, movies, etc.,) using the money saved from these denials for church missions, and/or spending the time saved from such activities, in prayer or other spiritual disciplines. Lent is a time to break sins, habits, and obstacles which prevent us from having a closer relationship with God.

It's all about "picking up" or "dropping off," that we might continually put self to death that Christ might live more in and through us. Paul said it this way in Philippians 3:13-14, "Breathen, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."