Temptation

This post is by Mark Zier, pastor at Aldersgate UMC:

Every year about this time I’m reminded of the line from Oscar Wilde: “I can resist anything but temptation.” O, how true that is for me.

When I’m hungry, I’m tempted to eat. Even when I’m not hungry, I’m tempted to eat. When I’m on the freeway, I’m often tempted to lay on the gas just a little harder. At least until I see the black and white patrol car at the side of the road (and everyone who lives in Marin knows exactly where on the side of the road!).

Other things don’t tempt me at all. I have no interest in feeding a one-arm bandit at the casino in the vain hope of hitting the jackpot. I’m not attracted at all to killing creatures for the sport of it (it would only be a sport, I suppose, if the creatures I sought to kill had the same weapons I did – and I certainly wouldn’t find that attractive).

But I am addicted to my work. Somehow I think that if I just work harder, I’ll succeed  – however I might measure that. I want my efforts to amount to something! So I work more and more and more…

When I fail, that’s the moment when I just might remember that I’m really not in charge here. That God has given me my time on this earth not to fret and worry and be consumed by the things that make for a comfortable, secure life; not to spend my time trying to turn stones into bread, or trying to impose my vision of the way the world ought to be on everybody else – making all the nasty political deals that that would take, or trying to persuade God of the correctness of my petty, personal desires and bend God to my will. God knows, it seems I spend much of my time trying to do these very things.

God, remind me that you want me to strive first for the things of the spirit: love, hope, joy, peace, forgiveness.  Remind me that without these things, everything else turns to dust. And be with me so that when I do forget, you will remind me again. Amen.