I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Romans 7:15

Most of us have a gap between what is ideal and what is real. We have the ideal of who we want to be and what we want to do, and then we have the reality of who we are and what we do. As an example, most people have an ideal to live a healthy life—they want to eat right, exercise, make time for hobbies, etc. I’ve never met anyone who said “I’m striving to live an unhealthy life, I’m trying to eat as much junk food as possible, and I want to spend every waking minute working with no time for myself.” Thus, many of us have the ideal, as an example, healthy eating, but then there is the reality, that we like our bag of chips or bowl of ice cream on the couch. Many times, we don’t even enjoy these things because either as we are eating them, or just after we finish, we feel this guilt and shame that we did the thing we didn’t really want to do, and then we get down on ourselves for doing it. But then we do it again the next day. It’s a vicious cycle. This cycle has two outcomes—we either say “well, forget it, I’m a junk food addict,” or we ramp up efforts to improve health. If we go with the junk food addict route, eventually, we are jolted by a medical situation that creeps up. And if we go the way to improve health, many of us will see progress, then we will regress, and we will go through this cycle of progression and regression many times.

There are, I suppose, a small number of people who don’t have this gap—those are the “saints” or the “sociopaths/narcissist.” The person who has amazing discipline will have a very small gap, though I don’t think there is anyone who has no gap. And the “sociopath/narcissist” believes they are above any gap, that everything they do is perfect. They are unable to recognize any gap.

Most of us have a gap between the ideal and the real when it comes to our spirituality. We want to see ourselves as people who believe in God, who pray, who read Scripture, who go to church to worship regularly, who act appropriate, who are generous, etc. However, there is the reality of how these things play out. We forget to pray, don’t make time for Scripture reading, don’t worship regularly, commit the same sins habitually, are not forgiving, are selfish, etc. We may even be well-intentioned about avoiding bad and doing good, but then we do the thing we don’t want to do, as St. Paul writes in Romans 7:15, and then we feel sad or guilty over our failure. This generally pushes us in one of two directions. We take sadness and guilt and are repentant, at least until we fall again. Or we take the sadness and guilt and let them lead to despondency, we stop caring about a gap that seems impossible to close. Sadly, at this point, some people just drop out. They stop praying, or trying, and sometimes walk away from Christianity and the church.

First, if you are relating to that last point, don’t give up, don’t drop out. Every day is a new day. St. Anthony, a saint of the fourth century who we commemorated a few days ago, wrote:

Every day, I say to myself, today I will make a new start.

My job is not to judge.

My job is not to figure out if someone deserves something.

My job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the people in pain.

That’s why I must start my job today by judging myself.

Any day is a great day to begin. Any time of day is a great time to begin. Many of us struggle with procrastination. We hate that we do it, but we will continue to do it. So if you’ve been sitting at your computer, looking at sports scores or something else that’s wasting your time, stop, and get back on task. Any moment is a good moment to begin something.

Secondly, let’s be mindful and honest about our gaps between who we think we are and what we think we are doing and what we are actually doing. The best way to confront what is lacking is to confront the truth that we are lacking something. We’ve discussed before the concept of the “secret heart” which holds a lot of our gaps in thinking. While we all like to think we have pure hearts and pure thoughts all the time, we are all flooded with unhealthy and sometimes impure thoughts, some of which are either so vile, or embarrassing, that we would never admit them to another person, even those we are closest to. This is one of the reasons why we pray the 50th (51st) Psalm so often, because Psalm 50/51:6 reads “Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.”  We definitely need God’s wisdom in order to fill our gaps, especially our secret gaps.

When a professional sports team is on a bad losing streak, they do not come into the locker room for another game and think “we stink, we’ll probably lose.” They think “Let’s get a win today.” If they lose today, they will think “Let’s get a win tomorrow.” And if they win today, they don’t think “well, it’s just one win against so many losses.” They think “We won today, let’s win tomorrow.” This is an attitude that will help us with the gaps we all want to close and the gaps where we are disappointed with ourselves. We can’t change the past, what is done is done. We can change the present, we can do something wholesome and gap-closing at any moment. We can do the thing we want, even the moment after we’ve done the thing we don’t want to do. If you haven’t prayed in a while, pray today. If you haven’t gone to church in a while, go this Sunday. If you eat poorly, eat healthy today. And if you’ve slid into a sinful habit, make a point of not doing that particular thing today—don’t think about not doing it the rest of your life, that’s too long of a time to think about, just focus on not doing it today. Just a few suggestions in how to close the gap between who we are who we want to be. Focus on closing your gaps today, in the moment you are in.

Lord, You have said that You are the way and the truth and the life. You know the truth about me. Deep down I know the truth about me. I know that there is a gap between who I want to be and who I really am. Help me to have the wisdom, the humility, the patience and the discipline to close that gap, so that I can be not only the person I want to be, but to especially be the person You want me to be. Teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Help me to stop doing the things I know are wrong, and the things I don’t want to do, and help me focus on doing what is right and noble and true according to how You define these things. Amen.

Every day is an opportunity for a new start. Focus on doing what you know is true, and closing the gaps between who you are and who you want to be.