Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Lent









I have been challenged to give up Facebook, my blog, and texting on my phone for the first week of Lent.  I know - Lent is 44 days.  I am having trouble with just 1 week of this!

So why give up anything for Lent?  What is that all about.  What is Lent anyway?

I found a fantastic article on keeping a Holy Lent.  I am going to quote some of it here.

Lent, as a season of preparation, is traditionally focused on repentance. Speaking biblically, to repent means to make a change in our attitudes, words, and lifestyles. As 16th century reformer Martin Luther taught, the Christian life in its totality is a life of repentance. Beginning when we first commit our lives to Christ, and continuing throughout our lives, we are more and more turning away from sin and self-centeredness and more and more turning to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.


Even though a repentant spirit should mark all we do, it is still appropriate that certain times be set aside for a particular focus on repentance. In much the same way, we celebrate the resurrection of Christ each Sunday, but especially at Easter; and while we should always thank God for the Incarnation, we especially celebrate it at Christmas. These periodic reminders keep us from becoming forgetful and imbalanced. The church has traditionally done this at the Lenten season (and, to a lesser extent, in the pre-Christmas season of Advent).

Lent, therefore, is a time for focusing on the heart, a time for asking questions about our spiritual health:

• What are my characteristic sins, and how can I work and pray for change?
• What idols have captured my imagination so that my love for the living God has grown cold?
• In what ways is my devotion to Christ and his church less than wholehearted?

The Lenten season is the spiritual equivalent of an annual physical exam; it’s a time to take stock of our lives, our hearts. Keeping Lent, however, is potentially dangerous, precisely because of this focus on the heart. After all, it is much easier to read a book on prayer than to spend time leisurely speaking with our heavenly Father. It is much easier to fast from certain foods than it is to turn from idols of the heart. It is much easier to write a check than to spend time in ministries of mercy. Consequently, Lent is easily trivialized. The point of Lent is not to give up chocolate; it’s to give up sin!

Even with this warning, however, we need to beware of going from one extreme to the other. Yes, it is possible so completely to externalize your Lenten observance that you end up trivializing it. Yet we need to remember that we are not purely spiritual beings. God created humans as physical beings; we are psychosomatic creatures, a “nexus of body and soul.”

For example, it is unquestionably true that my attitude in prayer is more important that my posture in prayer. However, sometimes being in a physical posture of humility—kneeling in prayer—helps me get in the right frame of mind. It shouldn’t surprise us in the least that there is a connection between the physical and spiritual; it simply reflects how God created us. That’s why, at the center of Christian worship, God gave us the sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist—simple physical rites involving water, bread, and wine, but rites that communicate to us the most profound of spiritual realities. That’s also why, in the pages of Holy Scripture and throughout the history of the church, we find many physical acts and postures What we do physically has an effect on us spiritually—and we neglect this principle to our peril.

Designed to help us worship, to help us pray, to help us in our spiritual growth. Recognizing this God-created link between the physical and the spiritual, the Lenten season has historically included a physical element, specifically fasting and other acts of self-denial.
I hail from a "Reformed" faith upbringing where we didn't even celebrate Lent.  We would occassionally fast for a day during Lent, or take the opportunity to focus more on introspection, but we never "practiced" Lent by giving up something very important to us.  I have considered it in the past - realizing that catholicism doesn't have the corner on the rights to sacrifice, but have never taken it very seriously.

So when my friends at work challenged me to give up my electronic obsessions it pierced my heart!  No seriously - it did!  These are obsessions for me.  I am totally and uterly addicted to Facebook, my blog, and texting!  And so something that has started out as a fun game at work, has truly gotten me thinking about what I make as an 'idol' in my heart.

The interesting part of what we did at work is that we choose for each other what they had to give up.  It's a real kick in the gut.  My friend, Brad, was like "The day after you had surgery - you know - the one where you spent the day in the hospital recovering?  I got home and got on Facebook and my ENTIRE News Feed was PAM!"  Ha!  That's funny.  No really - that's funny, right?  Not sad?  Tell me it's not sad.  :)

When I told my kids, they were like "MOM!  You can't do it!  We need to take away your computer and your phone - otherwise you can't do it."  UGH!  I mean - I'm OK with being addicted to these things - I'm confident and secure in who I am.  But I'm not so crazy about this mirror being held up to me.  I think the part I don't like the most about this is the reflection I'm seeing.  And for some reason - it bothers me.  And I don't like it.

And that's the whole point of this exercise right?  I mean it's fun to accept a challenge.  I can do this.  Don't tell me I can't do it.  Cause I can do it.  But the whole point of Lent is to give something up for the purpose of more introspection.  And I gotta tell ya - it's working. 

So yeah - I realize I am somewhat trivializing Lent.  I'm only doing a week - it's kind a like a contest at work to take on a challenge - I am really struggling with giving up Facebook of all things.  But it is having the desired result of helping me to identify and resolve the sin in my life.

And as a post-note to all of this ... my heart is especially broken for those having to go without things during this Lenten season that they never dreamed of having to live without.  For the co-worker who recently lost his wife to a horrible disease - I don't want to trivialize "going without".

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