Monday 9th March - Baggage

DAILY BYTE

As the theme for this Lenten series is, “Jerusalem! Setting our faces to the cross,” it is crucial for us to recognize that we are setting off in a new direction. As a church and as individuals, this season is a time for contemplating how we can do that in life-giving ways, and part of that process – the sometimes gruesome, mucky part – is identifying past baggage that we are bringing with us on this new journey.

We tend to talk about peoples’ baggage in negative ways – in the ways that it weighs them down and prevents them from moving forward. I picture in my head someone like myself, wading my way through the airport, rolling a suitcase with another one stacked and attached on top of it, a backpack on my back, a camera bag slung over one shoulder, and a handbag slung over the other shoulder with other extraneous bits and pieces lassoing my neck. Now, some of that baggage, I’m sure, is necessary – like toothpaste. But perhaps the fifth pair of shoes… Not so necessary...

Some things in life, we do carry everywhere with us, recognizing that they satisfy a need, reveal a certain part of our unique identity, or teach us something about the ways that we have lived in the past and the ways we desire to live in the future. Some baggage reminds us of the road we have travelled and enables us to make needed changes in our lives so that we can move forward.

But, some baggage does gradually cripple us more and more until we are so weighed down by it that we feel physically and spiritually unable to straighten ourselves out so that we can look up and see what’s before us.

The Book of Luke speaks of a spirit that had crippled a woman for eighteen years so that “she was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight” (Luke 13:11).

Do you feel that anything is crippling you in your life right now? Do you feel weighed down, hunched over, unable to stand up straight?

The American author and poet, Maya Angelou, has said:

"Each of us has the right and responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have travelled, and if the future road looms ominously or unpromising, and the road back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off the road into another. "

Are you carrying baggage that is necessary or unnecessary? What steps do you need to take to admit and confront the things in life that cripple you physically, emotionally, or spiritually? What might it take for you to set your face in another direction?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Christ who healed the cripple, reveal to us the places where we are crippled in our lives. Help us to identify unnecessary baggage and work through the process of letting it go so that we can set our faces in new directions that bring life to us and to others. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Luke 13:10-12

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”