I ran across this the other day in my files. I wrote it to someone with a drinking problem (hence the first paragraph), but it applies to many areas of life:
Drink intensified emotion, thoughtless speech, and hurt are an invariable sequential triumvirate. I wonder when we'll all learn that? And more importantly, stop repeating it like some mad scientist who endlessly conducts the same experiment, only to get the same unremembered results.
"Doing the same thing, all the while expecting a different result" is the stuff of Greek mythology - Sisyphus blind and perpetually rolling a giant boulder up a mountain to the peak, only to have it inevitably roll back down the mountain into the valley, a notion of life Camus called "absurd," and in direct opposition to "faith."
Endlessly repeating the same self-destructive action while expecting a different result in Christian terms is called "sin." "Faith" in a God who redeems us from sin is the way out. In human terms we are Sisyphus - unable to help ourselves - until God in Jesus Christ shows us the way to stop repeating our stupidity, and in the Spirit gives us the strength and courage to change what we do, so that, in fact, we get different results. That is, we begin living "in Christ" where we are ruled not by emotions but by reason (also known as divine "wisdom") and the "light of Christ."
We begin Lent this month on Ash Wednesday, February 21. I pray we will use Lent, not only to give up something we crave like chocolate or Scotch, but to take on a careful examination of who we are, where we are fooling ourselves, especially when we continually do the same old thing absurdly expecting a changed life or a renewed spirit.
Change comes through repentance; that is through a carefully examined life and an intentional decision to live differently - not in my own strength, but in the strength of God's Spirit which I specifically invite and welcome to live in me.
Jesus began by proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." (Matthew 4:17 NRSV)
At first this statement sounds threatening. Instead, it is inviting. Because the about-to-break-into-the-world-in-the-person-of-Jesus kingdom is not yet fully present, but only near, there is time to accept the invitation to "repent." That was the case two thousand years ago when Jesus said it, and it is true now when we read it in scripture.
When we repent, we find the kingdom is present in, with, and around us, as we experience dual citizenship in the kingdom of heaven where God is sovereign and in the nations of this world where other powers believe they are sovereign. We know differently, and rejoice in God's power in us by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, our savior and lord.