Lenten Devotions in Hard Economic Times

TWENTY-FOURTH DAY OF LENT 
                 MARCH 16
  
 Philippians 3: 4b-9
 
 
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,
I have more.
 
My credentials are impeccable,
Among those who rate
Righteousness 
On the scale of unimpeachable heredity
And gauge godliness
On the degree of meticulous adherence to
God’s law book.
 
Yet now
Everything I once thought I had going for me
Is insignificant—dog dung.
I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I
Could embrace Christ
And be embraced by Christ.
 

I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand
Of righteousness
That comes from keeping a list of rules.
 
True righteousness
Is direct exposure
To the beating heart
Of the Eternal One.
No firewalls erected
Around the searing flames
Of grace,
No high-number SPF
To block 
The sunlight of universal benevolence,
No heavy drapery of jargon
To enshroud the words of truth and life,
No insubstantial morsel
Tossed out
To tame the Holy One’s
Ravenous howling hunger
For justice and compassion.
 
Rather,
Righteousness,
Raw and real,
The full and filling portion,
Only available,
Yet always accessible,
While holding close to
Christ—the will and way of God,
Personified.

 
 
Philippians cited from New Revised Standard Version
and from The Message
commentary in italic