Bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory

Bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory

Today, the Sunday next before Lent, is the last Sunday in this short period of Ordinary Time before we move into the penitential Lenten season — It’ll be Ash Wednesday this coming Wednesday. We can see in this Collect that we’re beginning to prepare for Lent; acknowledging the disorder of our sinful lives, and asking for our crooked hearts to be set straight. But, at first sight, the phrase I’ve chosen to reflect upon from this week’s Collect, “Bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory”, seems a bit odd.

One would think that we don’t need our wills bending towards loving God’s goodness and glory. And I’m sure most of us, if not all, do indeed love God’s goodness and glory. The problem is that for many of us the effects of that love will be diluted because we also love the wrong things.

Jesus tells us, “‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). But that is what many of us have done, and I include myself in this, especially in the wealthier western world. It shows in the way many of us will do all we can to grab/earn another pound/euro/dollar, or have taken advantage of the buy-now-pay-later culture we’ve been living in — it’s the latter I’m most guilty of.

And now, with the current financial situation around the world, we can start to understand far more just why we were warned against trying to serve God and wealth: it really doesn’t work. There are many many people around the world who are in a much worse position than I’m in. My heart really goes out to those who, through no fault of their own other than living a normal western life, face financial ruin.

I don’t for one minute believe that God sends bad things our way to test us or anything like that. But I do believe, very strongly, that he can, and does, use bad situations and bring good from them. My hope and prayer is that somehow God will find a way to use the current difficulties for good. And maybe a part of that will be less dilution of our love for his goodness and his glory.

Holy God,
you know the disorder of our sinful lives:
set straight our crooked hearts,
and bend our wills to love your goodness
     and your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional Collect for The Sunday next before Lent
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council