2017 Belmont University Lenten Devotional GuideSample

One of my favorite books to teach in the Christian tradition is Confessions by St. Augustine,
who lived during the 4th century in the time of the decline of the Roman Empire. Augustine’s
story is that of a young person who is filled with passions. He loves to hang out with friends,
steal fruit from neighbors’ farms, go to stage and gladiator shows, and above all to drink, eat
and carouse. Why does human nature cause people to prefer the wrong path? Eventually, of
course, Augustine renounces his life of gluttony and sensual pleasure and commits himself
to a path that leads to God through Christ after reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. But the
question is one that endures: if we know the right thing to do, why is it that we often turn
away from the good things in life and prefer things that irritate, separate and divide us? The
Greek philosophers had a word for this: akrasia. It means the decision to choose the wrong
path when we consciously know that it is not the correct choice.
Sometimes, the choice of turning away from God is due to a predominance of emotion
over reason. The Psalmist praises God while singing and playing the tambourine, lyre, harp
and trumpet. But the bottom line is that we understood that the Lord is our God. We know
that He brought us out of the land of Egypt and promised to stop our hunger, but we
disobey. The psalmist writes that we do not submit, but follow our own stubborn whims.
Our obedience would mean receiving “the finest of wheat” and “honey from the rock,”
but too often we insist on our own selfish needs just like Augustine preferred the company
of his wild friends to that of Ambrose and Alypius. Jeremiah similarly laments the fact the
ancestors went from God and pursued worthless trivialities instead of looking into the heart
of the matter. Jeremiah writes that God led the Israelites into a plentiful land with fruits and
good harvests, but the people desecrated it and worshipped Baal. Instead of pursuing “the
fountain of living waters,” the people had forsaken God and dug out barren cisterns. The
final passage for today from 1 Corinthians comes right after Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul
embraces the same imagery of eating food offered to idols instead of being “baptized into
Moses” and drinking from the spiritual rock that is Christ. My prayer is that you turn away
from darkness, drink of the living waters and embrace the light that is Christ today.
JONATHAN THORNDIKE
Director of the Honors Program