Coming to the end of yourself
Step One in the 12 Steps of Recovery is a moment of reckoning: “I admit I am powerless over … (name your addiction), and that my life has become unmanageable.”
No recovery process gets traction without this pivotal acknowledgement. As long as I am in denial, I am a slave (as the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, until they passed through ‘d-Nile’).
I deeply appreciate my friends in recovery. They have a first-hand awareness of what it’s like to be a slave. And that awareness creates humility and honesty. The journey of recovery is a courageous journey every step of the way, requiring daily ‘deaths’ to all forms of denial and self-reliance.
I cannot begin the healing process until I come to the end of myself.
What an irony- the end of myself is the beginning of my freedom!
This is the message of today’s Lenten Psalm- Psalm 107.
The psalm begins with a call to ‘Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good and his steadfast love endures forever… Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story!”
Then, in four symmetrical stanzas, the psalm narrates four rescue stories:
Rescue from desert wandering (vss. 4-9)
Rescue from a dark prison (vss. 10-16)
Rescue from sickness (vss 17-22)
Rescue from stormy seas (vss. 25-32)
Each individual stanza has a similar narrative arc
Act I- Description of a desperate situation (‘disorientation’)
Act II- How people in that situation cried out to the Lord
Act III- The Lord’s response: ‘And he delivered them from their distress.’ (‘reorientation’)
Act IV- A call to celebrate: ‘Give Thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love!’
The pivotal moment in each story is the refrain, ‘Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble…’ (see vss. 6, 13, 19, and 28).
The pivotal moment in my freedom, deliverance, recovery, restoration and healing is that agonizing and yet beautiful moment when I come to the end of myself.
So, my questions for you as we continue our journey toward Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday: ‘In what way do you need to come to the end of yourself?’ and, ‘What prevents you from coming to the end of yourself?’
The gospel of Lent reminds us that the path to resurrection is always through death. Coming to the end of my self is a good and necessary death, leading to a glorious renewal.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. (Romans 6:8-10)
