What comes to mind when you think of the word submission?

Maybe it brings to mind things like oppression, slavery or dictatorship. That’s not what we want to think about when we think about submission in the context of God.

God is a loving God, to him submission is more of a love language, it’s choosing to love him above everything. It’s choosing to trust that his way is best. It’s like a bit of a trust fall with a friend, letting go and falling into his arms.

“Counting the poor is an exercise in the art of the possible. For deciding who is poor, prayers are more relevant than calculation because poverty, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.” writes Mollie Orshansky in a 1969 article entitled “Perspectives on poverty 2: How poverty is measured”. Orshansky was an American economist, the daughter of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants, whose work in the 1960s helped the U.S. Government define their thresholds for poverty.

Money and poverty are touchy subjects. Perhaps now more than ever in our developed Western society, as the economic squeeze continues to squeeze, relationships not only across social classes, but now more and more across the generations are becoming fractured over the issue. At the time of writing this reflection, there have been two articles on the BBC News about it, one of which lead me to discover the above quote.

I realised what an important point this quote brings out, and how the inverse of this statement is also true.

Riches lie in the eye of the beholder, too.

Do you like surprises?

When it comes to people, I think it’s fair to say that nothing captures the public attention quite like the news of a seemingly “good” person who turns out to be bad, or visa versa.

We often see this narrative appearing as the plot to our favourite films and TV series. Seeing Darth Vader terrorise a galaxy in the original Star Wars trilogy, but (does it really need a spoiler alert at this point?) give himself up to the cause of the Rebels in an act of self sacrifice at the end left an indelible mark on my ten-year-old brain!

When I got my first “real” full-time job, I worked as a Worship Pastor in London.

I was buzzing. But I was also arrogant.

I came in with strong opinions, quick to change things, slow to listen. I criticised anything that didn’t match my preferences or theology. I wasn’t malicious—I just assumed I knew best.

It didn’t take long before friction set in. I had awkward interactions, disagreements with teammates, and a growing sense of isolation. I felt miserable… and I’m pretty sure I was making others feel the same.

Eventually I reached a tipping point.

I could either leave, or stop trying to fight for control. So I made a decision to submit—to serve the team instead of reshaping it. I began asking, “How would you like this done?” And honestly, everything changed.

I remember recently going for a meal in a pub.

By the bar was a roaring fire, and sat on a stool by the fire was a couple,  and on the floor was their dog. A big golden Labrador.

What made this memorable was that the dog was lying on its back, completely content and at peace. It’s guard was completely down, and it clearly was completely trusting of its owners, its environment and felt it could completely just lose itself in the comfort and warmth of the pub floor!

Jochebed is living in Egypt with her husband and children. They have been forced into captivity and slavery as members of a displaced people group known as the Israelites or Hebrews.

Pharaoh is threatened by the growing numbers of strong and fruitful Israelite families and he fears they will overthrow him with enemy forces.

He orders the Hebrew midwives to kill any boy infants who are born into these families but they defy him because as believers they know God would not allow this. Pharaoh then commands his own people to kill all male Israelite babies.

Jochebed is able to hide her son and keep him safe for three months but then her circumstances become desperate.

Her baby son is in grave danger and she must protect his life - but how? This is a miracle moment.

Submission isn’t easy. It wasn’t for Jesus in Gethsemane, and it hasn’t been for me either.

As a student pursuing an engineering degree, I had my life mapped out. A secure job, financial stability, and the freedom to carve my own path—it all made sense. My plans were clear, logical, and set me up for success.

But then, God called me to something different. He asked me to follow Him, to serve and lead in the Church. He asked me to lay down my plans—plans I had carefully built—and trust His.

In the medieval period, noblemen would swear fealty to the king. Kneeling before him, they would promise to remain loyal and support the king in his aims. One historian has said that these bonds of fealty were “stronger than family ties”. 

I’m sure none of us can imagine kneeling in front of someone else and swearing our undying loyalty to them. And yet, we are called to submit to Christ, and to each other. 

Submission is an acknowledgement that we are not in charge.

It’s no secret that I’ve had more careers and years in education than some have had hot dinners.

Each time I’ve approached these areas of my life, it’s always been with the intention that ‘oh this is it, this is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.’

Then inevitably God will show up, tell me, ‘nope. Go there, here, do this, that.’

I remember when I was a lot younger and God telling me to lay down my performing arts career hopes (it really was for the best in hindsight).

I pushed against his edict for months before finally giving in. I did this whilst moodily sitting in my back garden with my journal, dramatic tears flowing down my cheek gazing at the sky saying ‘ok God.’

It was not the first, nor the last time God would ask me to lay something down for him. I’d like to say I was a smidge more obedient the next time, I can’t be sure.

I do know that it wasn’t done with a one woman amateur dramatic production in my back garden.

I will say this, I think I’ve done far more walking with God than I ever would on my own.

My phone tells me I spend hours a day on social media.

Like, actual hours.

And I had no idea. I don’t even remember opening the apps half the time. Seeing those numbers properly scared me. So for Lent, I’ve been abstaining from social media.

Not because it’s evil or sinful—Instagram hasn’t sent me off the rails—but because it quietly became something I felt like I needed. What started as a want turned into a habit, and that habit started messing with my mind and time.

Around 7 years ago, I spent 10 days in Ethiopia visiting a project run by Stand by Me, a charity we support as a family. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet the child that we sponsor. I saw him at school for a few days, and then I was taken to his house to meet his family.

He was 6 years old at the time, and we walked with him back to his house from his school. It was around 45 minutes walk, on rough roads, which he did daily alone. His mother could not do the journey any more and so he learnt the route, packed his own bag up and off he went. We arrived at the hut - which was a mud hut, with a corrugated metal panel which acted as a door.

Our spare room has a pile of boxes that we’re ignoring, left over from when we moved in and never unpacked them. Chatting to some friends recently, I realised that they’ve also got a spare room full of boxes that were never unpacked. Which is ridiculous.

We’ve got so much stuff that we either don’t have room for, or we’ve not even needed since moving house, so it’s just sitting forgotten in a box, replaced by more stuff that we’ve since bought.

Our lives can feel a bit like our spare room. We live in a materialistic society that is constantly screaming at us to buy more, earn more, have more, be more…but when we work and work to accumulate more and more stuff to insulate ourselves with, we push God out- our lives full of stuff mean that there’s no room for God.

Last week, I met an asylum seeker family who came into our church in Blackpool. They had fled persecution, carrying very little but their faith and a hope for safety. Their journey was marked by trauma and loss, yet their trust in God remained unshaken. Hearing their story, I felt compelled to act—not out of abundance, but from a heart convicted by Jesus’s call to serve.

We can easily fall into unacceptable ways of thinking about people by adopting bad examples displayed in the world around us.

Those set by social media perhaps or by our past experiences. Our own limited perception of what is good or acceptable behaviour comes into play instead of thinking more deeply about God’s standards.

There’s a story in the Bible of a woman, Mary, who in an act of extravagant worship, pours expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet. The Bible tells us that “the house was filled with the sweet smell of her perfume”. Her worship was so extravagant that it affected everything around her. 

When we choose to abstain from things that we really want, from things that are good in our life, it’s like we’re choosing to pour out our own expensive perfume at the feet of Jesus. And the impact of that, like the scent from the perfume, should spill out into our lives.

It should change us.

One of the most infuriating aspects of existence for me, is to not be apologised to, especially when I was a child.

The injustice of it all still rankles, and to be honest, if I left it, this feeling could easily turn to bitterness and anger. Having seen the emptiness of bitterness, I think I’d rather avoid that thank you very much.

My husband, Matt and I had our baby girl back in November.

It has been such an incredible time; time I know we won’t get back. However I had found myself spending a lot of this precious time scrolling through social media. Any mothers out there who have ever breastfed know how long you are sat in the same spot feeding your child.

My phone was always to hand, so I found myself opening up instagram and “doom scrolling”. I’d look back at my screen time overview to see that literally hours of my day were spent on social media.

Sometimes I would only stop when my phone ran out of battery.

As humans, we occupy a very strange place in the universe.

We are created as the image bearers of God, yet that nature is corrupted by the actions of Adam and Eve in the garden.

We can see this so clearly in the world around us, we are capable of creating works of such beauty that it makes one weep, and acts of such violence that we don’t believe the telling of it.

When I was a student and started following Jesus more seriously, I quickly noticed that some of what I did wasn’t compatible with how He lived. The things I once saw as normal - getting drunk, chasing wealth, casual dating - pursuing whatever felt good in the moment—suddenly didn’t align with the life God was calling me to.

That’s where sanctification comes in.

Abstinence is a deliberate choice to step away from distractions and focus on what truly matters. This verse challenges us to reflect on what occupies our minds and whether it aligns with God’s will.