Pause Alert: 

After today, The Up Daily Devotional will go on pause for a week, returning on March 17th. I’m taking some vacation time. Can you believe the devotional has been going for almost 10 years?

You can access previous devotionals at TheUpDevo.com. You can also listen to back episodes on your favourite podcasting app. Just search for ‘The Up Devotional by Matthew Ruttan’ in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you subscribe.

Okay, back to today’s devotional.

Many people “give up” things during Lent. Traditionally, people have gone without (or reduced) certain foods. Today, people fast from bad habits or certain technologies.

Regardless of whether you fast or not, this time of year can be a good time to identify those things in our lives which have started to take up a disproportionate and negative amount of space.

And get rid of them.

Perhaps it is a bad habit. Perhaps it is a way you have used your time but which you now realize is outside your main priorities. Maybe it is a goal you are chasing—but which you know, deep down, won’t ultimately satisfy. It could even be a lifestyle you have adopted but which is distracting you from following Jesus more fully.

Bernard of Clairvaux was a man of great devotion who lived in the twelfth century. He wrote: “Trying to find happiness in the world is like watching a starving man trying to eat air.”*

Just picture it. A man is hungry. In fact, he’s starving. So he tries biting the air. Will it satisfy his hunger pains? Of course not. That’s like you and me if we try to satisfy our deepest longings with the things of this temporary and broken world.

In Matthew 6 Jesus was teaching about storing up treasures in heaven instead of treasures on earth. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (verse 21). Your heart follows your treasure, and your treasure follows your heart. That’s why it’s helpful to be honest about what you’re really chasing. Are they the things of God, or the things of the world?

This time of year can be a good time to identify those things in our lives which have started to take up a disproportionate and negative amount of space.

Maybe it’s time for a purge.

“Trying to find happiness in the world is like watching a starving man trying to eat air.”*

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Notes:

-The Up Devotional is now on pause and will return on March 17, 2025.

–Fasting. Interested in learning more about this ancient, biblical practice? Here’s a post and podcast episode I put together on the subject. Click here.

-*Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, trans. Catherine Rose (2025), 23-24.

-Bible quotes are from the NIV.