PUT ON YOUR NEW SELF

One day in Companions in Christ class, we were wrestling with recognizing the barriers that keep us from completely putting on our new selves and living in the consciousness that the Spirit is within us all the time. Lots of barriers were mentioned, especially the lack of time, the needs of children, work, other commitments. One of the students was particularly quiet during the discussion, so I asked her what she was thinking. She said she was hearing a song in her head from the ’60s that was about God having set a banquet for us all but how we have lots of excuses for not coming. She sang the refrain for us, and the next week she brought the CD. It goes like this:

I cannot come to the banquet,
don’t trouble me now.
I have married a wife,
I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments
that cost a pretty sum
Pray hold me excused
I cannot come! *

As we sang along with the CD, I had this great sense of the ridiculousness of our excuses and the danger of missing the glorious banquet because we are so wrapped up in our “fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum.”

May you let go of all the things that hold you back from putting on your new self.

— Nancy Searls

* from the CD Joy is Like the Rain, by the Miriam Therese Winter/Medical Mission Sisters

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist