Lent Day 3: Running up the white flag

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world 
to be holy and blameless in his sight. 
In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship 
through Jesus Christ,
in accordance with his pleasure and will— 
to the praise of his glorious grace, 
which he has freely given us in the One he loves. Ephesians 1:4-6

Anywhere in the world, people recognize a white flag. It means, "We surrender. We're giving up - and if you're willing, to negotiate."

Are you ready to say to God, "I surrender?" He asks for all of me, for all of you ... no part held back. His model is giving his whole life - and his death - on our behalf.

"God with us!" = worth celebrating and emulating. Is divine hope and peace worth running up a white flag to trust God with your life?

C. S. Lewis put it this way in his book, The Weight of Glory: For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is our-selves. 

For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. 

Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. I do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. 

What cannot be admitted—what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy—is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim.

For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.

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