lent: divorcing our bad habits

I’m going to flip a song over on its head. I want to offer a spiritualization of something that probably was supposed to be completely secular. Lent, by British indie-pop band Autoheart, is totally onto something.

I got absorbed into the song’s catchiness the other day, and I naturally found myself thinking about the love of my life, Jesus. Then I was thinking about my bad habits–those that I am, in a way, “married” to, and that block me from getting as close as I desire with Love Himself. Noticing my bad habits, after all, is a great reflection for Lent.

Yup–from my point of view the song Lent totally has a great lesson for us. The lesson is not about how and why to divorce, which seems to be the story it tells. No way! Jesus himself tells us that divorce is not OK. The song’s lessons are much deeper than you might think.

You see, Lent is about making changes, all for the sake of true freedom. We fast, we give alms, we pray and engage in all sorts of practices in order to renew our relationship with Jesus. We’re getting ready for Easter but in order to really experience the joyous freedom that the resurrection offers, we really gotta be real with ourselves and acknowledge our sinfulness. If we are real, this part can get ugly.

We are called to take an inventory of what occupies our heart, our time and our thoughts. When we’re real with ourselves, God will highlight what we can let go of.

I desire to return to God with my whole heart but I know that first I must get rid of some things. I must really say I’m sorry. I must repent or I could perish, like last Sunday’s Gospel said. In order to repent, I gotta throw some stuff away. Like the song says: “Give it up, give it up, give it up for Lent. Take a break, pack it in, take it out to the bin.”

Once we really throw those bad habits away–or divorce our marriages to them even more dramatically–we can run to Jesus and ask for grace and forgiveness. We can whole-heartedly sing, like the voices in the song do, “I don’t want to act like this. You know, I want to be free! I want to be free!”

Love is ready and waiting.  Come Easter Sunday, Jesus will joyfully dance with us and together we’ll get to rejoice! We are free!