Just Visiting

Welcome to Lent! Are you suffering yet? Afterall, isn’t that the idea of Lent, giving up something and thus suffering, if only a little? Often to no other purpose than to feel good about ourselves for sacrificing some nonessential. Why the Lenten need? Is it perhaps because we do nothing the rest of the year? That the living of our lives is no different from the agnostic across the street, maybe even a little worse, and we need something. A little dirt on the forehead, passing on chocolate and VOILA! we are sharing in the suffering of Jesus.

I don’t do Lent because I don’t think I would or could do it right. I doubt I could attempt it with right motivations, desire or expected results. Giving up pasta has more to do with reducing my waistline than reducing my pride. I need to work on substance, not style (despite my total lack of the latter).

If you do Lent I hope you do so in a way that is in keeping with the original intent. Sacrifice, really, truly. If you limit it to something like giving up Starbucks for Lent?, take the money you would have spent and give it to the church. Take the time you would have been at Starbucks and sipping on your drink to engage in one of the spiritual disciplines, pray, read scripture, etc. Remember. That is the point, no matter what you do or do without, the idea is to bring you closer to God. Whenever you reach for that forbidden item and stop, take the moment, the time saved from not playing Warcraft, to be with Jesus and perhaps it will continue through the year.