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Day Thirty
Day Thirty // March 31 // Deceit
“If you wear a mask for too long, there will come a time when you cannot remove it without removing your face.” – Matshona Dhliwayo –
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We live in a day of appearances. We want people to think well of us. We want to appear like we have it all together. We mask our struggles and our doubts. And in trying to be who we think others want us to be, sometimes we deceive ourselves – we forget who we really are.
If faithfulness is being true to God, then deceit takes that original, unique creation that God made us to be and hides it under a bushel basket. To be faithful means to be honest. It means to be real. It means to be honest about what we want and need and not play passiveaggressive games.
Lent challenges us to honestly assess how well we are following Jesus. How often do we deceive ourselves? We satisfy ourselves with good intentions. We excuse ourselves when we don’t give our best. We ask God to bless our desires rather than seek His divine will.
We fall repeatedly for the greatest deceitful thought of all – one that is captured in an old legend. As the story goes, Satan is testing his apprentices in how to trick and ruin human beings. One says, “I will tell them that there is no God.” Another joins in, “I will tell them there is no hell.” Satan is not impressed. He says, “You will deceive no one that way, they know better than that.” A third student speaks up, “I will tell them there is no hurry.” “Yes,” Satan responds. “Go and do that, and you will ruin them by the thousands.”
The great deceit is that there is plenty of time. How many acts of service have been put off until tomorrow? How many phone calls are not made; how many relationships are not mended? How many Bible studies are not attended and mission trips ignored? We believe in all those things, and we intend to do all those things… tomorrow. But the Psalmist challenges us: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24)
If we want to be faithful, we need to stop deceiving ourselves starting today!
