Tag Archive for: Missing the Mark

Olympic Second

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Armodoxy Today: Olympic Second

The Olympic competitions are unavoidable these days as athletes from throughout the world are competing for the top titles and the medals: gold for first place, silver for second and bronze for third. Of course, the networks that carry the actual games are busy sending signals across the globe, and everyone else is quick to report results, with an emphasis on their favored team.

I find the level of competition fascinating. We are watching world class athletes push the limits of their bodies. Take a moment to watch a competition and especially pay attention to how the competitions that are measured by time, such as a race or a swim meet. I watched a relay race that was decided by one one-hundredth of a second! I mean, how fast is that? It’s faster than the blink of an eye. Perhaps the flap of a fly’s wing? Let’s agree that it’s fast. Super fast. Now think about it, when you hear that the world competition is decided by one one-hundredth of a second, It means that the winner who took home second place, the silver medal was only off by a hundredth of second! You look at them standing in the winners area. The gold medal winner is standing there and next to the guy who did not win.

Now let’s be fair. The guy who lost by a hundredth of a second is indeed a world class athlete! Come on… even the athlete who comes in last place, is world class and misses the gold by only a few seconds. But all is fair in love and Olympic competitions and he has to step down and accept the silver medal. In the days of non-electronic time pieces, measuring such differences might not have been observed, but they are today, and the athlete who has prepared all of his or her life for this competition is set off by this fraction of a second by which he or she missed the mark.

I couldn’t help but make the parallel in Christian life and the notion of sin. Sin is simply missing the mark. It’s a term that makes sense in archery. Imagine a target with a black dot in the center of a series of red and white circles. Anything outside of the black dot, what we refer to as the bull’s eye, is sin. Some people hit the line between the red and black, others hit the space on the third rung and still others miss the target completely. All of the hits are in sin.

In our life, we sin. It doesn’t mean we are bad people, rather, it only means that we are people. Only God is sinless. Anything outside of the center – outside of perfection – is sin, or being human. And since we all miss the mark of perfection, ours is not to judge. Leave the judging for the Olympic games and focus rather on improving yourself. The difference between Gold, Silver and Bronze may be seconds, but in the sight of God those seconds melt into an amalgama called life.

Let us pray, Grace us, O Lord the vision to follow in the path of the saints. Strengthen in me the resolve to improve on the graces you have bestowed upon me, to exercise my soul with love and compassion, in my path toward the Kingdom. Amen.

Cover: Envato Elements

Love within Revolution: Repentance

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Armodoxy for Today: Evolving Love

When political systems do not work there is a call for revolution. The word itself comes from revolve – that is to turn around. In Christianity we use the word “repentance” which means to turn direction and aim toward God.

From early apostolic days, the term repent was used to imply a change in direction toward God. The Apostle Peter urged people to “repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2:38)

Repentance or repenting is a necessary part of the Christian life. What is often forgotten is that repentance takes place after self-evaluation. The necessity to repent is part of the human condition because we are not perfect.

One of the prayers offered by the priest in the Armenian Church is a prayer that you will never hear read over you, and if you do hear it read over you may want to check our surroundings. It is from the funeral service of the Church where the priest asks God, in His Mercy, to forgive the person of his sins, “because who is it that lives, and does not sin?” And in an explanation (if not to God then to all who hear this prayer) the priest confesses that “Only You (God) are sinless and to You belong the kingdom of all eternities.”

In fact, “sin” is merely an acknowledgement of our human condition. It means we are not perfect and we miss the mark of perfection. Think of a dart board, it is a target with a bull’s eye in the middle. Now imagine tossing darts at the board. For every dart that misses the center, that dart is said to be in sin. The dart that misses the bull’s eye by one ring and the dart that misses by three rings, as well as the dart that misses the entire board, have sinned; they have missed the mark.

Sometimes repentance is described with the phrase turning 180 degrees, that is, turning completely around. Not so. Sometime smaller adjustments are necessary, and the only judge of the degree of adjustment is you yourself. That is why self-evaluation is so important in the life of the Christian, and for this reason the Armenian Church gives opportunities, through days of prayer and fasting, for self-evaluation.

Each of us is in need of correcting our courses in various degrees. This is the revolution that is the beginning of living with heightened awareness. Inside of the word revolution is the word evolution and in reverse form the word love. The true call to Repentance is the call to turn around the LOVE that is missing from our lives so that we can evolve. All living forms evolve. Evolution is part of the living process. Things that are dead, decay. They do not evolve. And rightly so, they do not have the capacity to love.

The God-gift that is inside each of us is the capacity to love. Revolutions that do not accent the love within them are doomed to failure. Revolutions that have turned around the love within them are of the type that Jesus Christ ushered in with the Kingdom of Heaven. And so he instructs us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all else will fall into place. (Matthew 6:33)

We pray a prayer from the Book of Hours of the Armenian Church, “O God, Merciful, Compassionate and Patient, who pains for the sufferings of His creation. Console and grace us the reason for repentance so that we may enter Your Holy Church with spiritual enrichment, confession and repentance and along with your saints praise and glorify You, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirt. Amen.”

Lenten Journey Day 12 – Sin, Missing the Mark

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Day 12: Sin

Lenten Recipe

Recipe 12: Portobello Seitan Hash

Lenten Journey Day 12 – Sin
You have made it to the 12th day of Lent. Today is an opportunity to look back and say, Yes, I have done it and to look forward and say, Yes, it is possible to complete! Today is also a day not to get caught up in the foolish pride of accomplishment, and instead understanding that there is a purpose for the Journey. Lent is for the betterment of the self. By improving the self, we will be better able and equipped to affect others, society, our community and ultimately our world.

Today we will look at the problem of sin. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts or themes in the Christian faith is sin. Our understanding, or misunderstanding, of sin stems from models that have been set up for us and have conditioned us since childhood. We associate sin with the bad or evil in our life because evil is punished, or at the very least, it produces unfavorable consequences. Even more, in religion, particularly in the traditional Judeo-Christian system of thought, the punishment for evil is augmented by concepts of condemnation and damnation. These models creep into our adult life and skew our perception of life. They distort our view of what life is what life can be.
The truth is, all of our actions  – not just evil, but everything we do – has consequences.  Actions are made up of emotional thoughts and they are acted out by physical means. Newton’s laws of motion tell us that to every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. This applies to the physical world as well as the spiritual world.
So let’s begin by saying that all evil is sin, but not all sin is evil.
Sin means missing the mark. Imagine a large target and in this target is the center circle. That large black circle is called the bull’s eye. Now imagine a bow and arrow in your hands. You pull back on the bow and let the arrow go. The arrow travels through space, through time and eventually it hits its destination. You have aimed for the bull’s eye, you have aimed for perfection, but somehow it didn’t make it. You missed the mark. You may hit quite a ways off of the mark, you might have hit close by. In fact, you may not have hit the target at all! No matter what the case –close or far from the bull’s eye – you  missed the mark! That’s sin. Close or far from the targeted area, it’s a sin. Sin is sin. You aimed for perfection but came short of it. You missed the mark.
Each of us strives for perfection. We all want to hit that mark, we want the best for ourselves, for our families, for our children; but we journey through space and time, much like the arrow and are influenced by many factors including the wind, freak occurrences, lack of focus or unnoticed obstacles, and we do not hit the mark.
When we hit elsewhere, what is our reaction? We go back and try again. We pull the arrow out, put it on the bow one more time and shoot again. In our lives we have opportunities to recreate ourselves and strive for the perfection no matter how many times we miss the goal. When we fail it doesn’t mean anything more than that we are human.
Let’s imagine that same bow and arrow with God being the Archer. Can you imagine what we would see? Every time that God pulls and lets go of the arrow, the arrow hits the bulls eye. It hits the center each and every time. That’s perfection. Now imagine you or I coming and standing in the same spot that God stood. We try, but miss the target. Does that mean we are evil? No. It simply means we are bad shots. It means we hit the wrong place and so we go back and we try again.
With this basic understanding of sin we can understand ourselves, and humanity, not as evil, wicked or worthy of damnation. Rather, we are striving for perfection and fall short. We are in sin.
Life gives us an opportunity try again. Certainly this Lenten Journey is an opportunity to give us a chance to look at the marks that we have missed. We must first pull out the arrows and try again, to fix relationships that have gone sour, to fix perceptions and prejudices, to try again at failed attempts of business, to improve our outlook and attitude, to try again at love. By understanding the nature of sin in this manner, we understand that the improvement we make on our self will have ramifications on the world we live in and the people we touch.
Next week we will take a closer look at what we call the “7 deadly sins” but as a prelude to that I wish to offer you a small little excerpt from a Cherokee diary. Interestingly enough, you will find an lesson that is appropriate for today.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed arrogance, self pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, deception, false pride, superiority and ego. The other wolf is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, righteousness, compassion and faith.”  
The grandson thought about it for a moment and replied, “But Grandfather, which one wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Let us pray the prayer of St. Nerses Shnorhali:
Searcher of secrets I have sinned against you willingly and unwillingly, knowingly and unknowingly, grant me, a great sinner forgiveness for since I was born of the holy font until this day I have sinned before you, by my senses and all the members of my body. Have mercy upon your creatures and upon me a great sinner. Amen  (I Confess with Faith 8/24)