For the last seven years we’ve had an unfinished room in our basement. It has functioned as a combo storage room, school room, library, office, guest room, and spider condo. It’s been pretty dingy, with concrete walls on one side, an unfinished fireplace, the exposed furnace, and some yellowed out sheetrock. But the last couple of weeks we have been working on finishing the room. We separated it with a wall creating a storage room which we’re leaving unfinished, and a room that will be a combo family room / guest room. We have the sheetrock up, taped, and mudded. Yesterday was sanding day. I’ve done quite a bit of sheetrock work and at this point am pretty good at it. I was excited when I was putting the mud on cause it was looking so good, and I was patting myself on the back thinking how good I’ve become at mudding. Then yesterday we started sanding, and I hooked up my powerful work light to shine down the walls so we could better see our sanding. 

I should have had the light out when I was doing the mudding. The light revealed my mudding job was not nearly as good as I’d thought. I hadn’t really noticed the shadows of the room before I put the bright light on it. When I did, there were missed spots and rough spots and ditches and ridges. It could have been worse, but it also could have been a lot better. But I was deceived because I thought I was looking at it in good light, and then when a better light was shined on my work, it turns out I’d been working in shadow, thinking it was light. The result was we got to do a lot more sanding and touch ups than we should have had to do. 

This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, which is the start of a period of time in the traditional church calendar called Lent. Lent is the 40 day period leading up to Easter, which contrary to how we celebrate now as a single day, and really a single service, was a week long celebration in the ancient church. Lent began roughly 1000 years ago, has been practiced by millions of faithful Jesus followers, and while not a Biblical tradition is worth considering. Many people will choose to give something up, to fast from sweets, or technology, or coffee. Others make a point to do some specific things to grow their faith life - take daily prayer walks, spend additional special time in prayer or service. But the whole point of lent is to create a season of contemplation and reflection of our lives, to consider how our lives are aligning with the ways of Jesus and His Kingdom. 

Perhaps you might thing of Lent in this way. All year long you’ve been building on your life. You’ve been framing and mudding and painting. You’ve been creating images, or maybe tearing them down. You’ve been listening to voices telling you who you are and what matters. You’ve been watching things that are forming your character, defining your perception of what is good and true. But we live in a shadow land, and in this world it is not always easy to see clearly. We can easily think we are doing well, building well, that our lives are headed in a good direction. But are they? 

Over the next few weeks leading up to Easter I will be offering some thoughts intended to shine the light on our lives. I want to challenge you to take a hard look. There will be some things that look good. But there will also be some places that don’t look so good. Some places that only look good as long as you stay in the shadows. Life in the shadows becomes life in the darkness, which in the end is death. All life requires light. And when we see with His light, things seldom look that great. That’s okay! It just means Jesus Spirit wants to do some sanding and patching with you. I can’t say it will be fun, but I can say it will be good. 

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1: 5-7)