The Crooked Made Straight Again
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
Reflection By Westina Matthews
Please give me, Lord, a clean heart,
I wanna walk much better.
- Margaret Pleasant Douroux
“Do you think you can run out of chances with God?” I asked my spiritual advisor during one of our sessions more than 30 years ago. Looking through tear-filled eyes, I anxiously awaited his response.
I had raised the question because I was recovering from a life-threatening illness, had been abandoned by my then boyfriend in the midst of my recovery, and my job was suffering. Flat on my back, my body wracked with pain, I had a lot of time to begin to think about my life as it was and how I would like it to be.
“No,” he gently reassured me. “You don’t run out of chances with God. It may take a while to ‘make the crooked straight’ again (Isaiah 45:2 KJV), but you don’t run out of chances with God.”
After 3,955 days, Tiger Woods won his fifth Masters and, at the age of 43, became the second-oldest winner of the Masters at Augusta National. After countless false starts, with personal and professional setbacks, on Sunday, April 14, 2019, Tiger Woods showed the world that he had not run out of chances. The crooked was made straight again.
Like Tiger Woods, I too, experienced plenty of false starts and wrong turns. The gospel hymn Give Me A Clean Heart (Psalm 51:9-12) became my personal anthem. And through prayerful listening and sacred conversations with the holy, I began creating a new covenant with God, continually affirming who I am, who I am becoming, and who I want to be.
Lent offers us an invitation to live into the belief that the crooked can be made straight again.
For forty days we are invited to remember the sacrifice of one life, thousands of years ago, so that we can experience a new life today. This is an invitation for healing so that even in our brokenness, we can be made whole again. This is the assurance that we don’t run out of chances with God.
And, it all begins with the forgiveness of ourselves and the forgiveness of others. Let us hold our broken world—and our own brokenness—in compassion, light, and love. For God’s love reigns forever, forgiveness is the key, reconciliation is the goal, and love is always, always, the answer.
The promise of Easter awaits.