Temptation...

Temptation…

is rife with negative denotations.

These pesky intrusive thoughts can heavily weigh upon one’s psyche and stir up reticent inadequacies and dispirited feelings.

Usually invoked as an enticing inner uprising or an external ploy that we give into in our weakness, a selfish desire to be avoided or overcome, or an impure thought that hinders prudent judgement and actions, it can press the spiritual panic button.

Seeking outside of oneself for fulfillment, gratification, and wisdom has plagued man for millennia, and alas, these tentative replacements only pacify temporarily as they cannot hush what only the Spirit can.

Temptations are merely symptoms of a larger issue: our relationship with or lack of with The Almighty.

It can be very stressful and overwhelming when these unnerving feelings of dissatisfaction and restlessness occur, but their purpose is not to penalize.

They are trumpeting a spiritual wake-up call that something is amiss.

Rampant accommodation of physical desires abound today with the seven deadly sins as the perfect list to insulate and further separate us from God and His calling and deter personal introspection as to our primal deficiencies.

Afterall, pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth will skew the focal point with God sidelined on the periphery and self- gratification hogging the spotlight.

Lent is the season of conversion from self to others and God.

This internal transformation reorients one by turning from sinful venues to the powerful perpetual provisions of the Holy One.

We, as a society, seek distraction, and these cardinal sins deliver big time furnishing a countless supply of candy-coated vices.

Fortunately, there are seven virtues that can reacclimate the human disposition and recalibrate it to Divine order with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence.

Each of these Divine gifts are in direct opposition to the correlating sin, and can be the essential counterbalance to getting back on track.

During the forty days of Lent we are nudged to contemplate these vastly divergent themes juxtaposed as competing ideologies of the self vs God.

Each specific sin is cause for alarm, but the true nature of these sins lies in their ability to spur usage of the others, similarly to a domino effect.

For example, pride tells you that you are more important, which can catalyze greed and lead to envy for more and gluttony and overconsumption of multiple sources.

Before one is aware of the jaded spiral, it may become apparent that one is slothful also with the foremost neglected area being God.

Instead, let us breed the Holy Spirit’s Gifts, and rebuild and fortify the bridge to God, who eternally sustains us despite our flaws and errors. And so we pray…

~ ”And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil,” Matthew 6:13 ~

HEaling Link® will meet Tuesday, March 7, 2023 @ 7:30pm via Zoom. For more information, please contact Jackie: HEalingLink03@gmail.com Isn’t it time to get Linked?