My parents were recently in France and they brought this
small leather journal, handmade by a street vendor, back for me. I love this journal for a
lot of reasons. First, this journal has character. Even with still primarily blank
pages, it already has a story to tell because of who made it and how it was
made. I appreciate that it came from a side-alley street vendor, from the not-so
glamorous and potentially overlooked. This journal makes me feel like a real
writer while I scribble random thoughts onto the unlined pages; I feel like a Victor Hugo or even F. Scott Fitzgerald during his time in France. This
journal inspires me to dig deeper and go further into my passion.
I’ve recently been reflecting on repentance and how we have
this need (or even command) for daily repentance. I wake up a sinner and go
to bed a sinner, but too often I fail to see the gravity of my sin on a day to
day basis. When you do something against someone, you apologize/confess/repent in order to make your relationship right again. This is common knowledge and we all practice this readily. But every day I sever my relationship with the Lord because of my actions and I do not make the right efforts to restore. I have a
need for daily repentance in order to maintain a right relationship. (Not that
it is even my doing, only His doing, but I won’t get into the theology now.)
One of the ways I sin against Him is in my independence. I
take great pride in the fact that I have my life rather figured out. (Famous
last words?) But actually, I have a routine and a system and it works.
Structure is good and important, but it results in a lack of dependence on the
Lord. As long as I stick to my schedule I’m
going to have a great day. But is there room for reliance in my schedule?
This morning in church we sang a rendition of Great is Thy
Faithfulness, and afterwards the pastor said, “It has never been a question of
God’s faithfulness but rather our faithfulness. We are people who continually
make a mess of things both advertently and inadvertently.” At that moment, the
words repentance and dependence flashed across my mind.
Naturally, because writing is my passion, words are also. I was intrigued by the way these words sound so similar. I
did a little research to see if they have more in common than seven
letters. Sadly, they do not.
Repentance comes from
the Greek word metanoia which literally
means “to change one’s mind.” When metanoia enters our English language and
becomes repentance it loses some of its intended meaning. Metanoia isn’t meant
to be about guilt or shame, but rather about making a decision to turn around.
Unfortunately, the origin of the word dependence is very
pathetic in comparison to repentance and hardly even worth mentioning.
Dependence comes from the Old English word dependre which means to rely. The
end. My excitement came to a crashing halt when I discovered just how boring
dependence is.
However, all is not lost, I am still going to attempt a correlation between the two.
Every morning I wake up a sinner and I am faced with a choice: to repent or not
to repent. And it is not about waking up with guilt, it’s about waking up with a
choice. The choice to depend. To turn away from my own self and my own routine
and desires, and instead rely on Him. God is a relational God. He
loves us, and love has to have a choice; He allows us to choose. This is both
daunting and humbling. We can choose to turn to Him or not.
So, I’ll continue to write and scribble in my little French
journal and make choices. I’ll make thousands of choices every day, some will
be bad and others will be good. But the most important decision I can
make in the morning and all throughout my day is to continually turn away from
myself and toward Him.
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