Sometimes it's hard to know what to make of Lent.
On the one hand, prominent religious leaders speak of Lent as a time where we must give up something to remember what Jesus gave up for us. I get that. It makes sense. Lent provides an opportunity to lay hold of that reflection. Our hunger for whatever we fast from reminds us that Jesus engaged fully in the human experience and endured every second of it sinlessly, though dying a torturous, criminal's death. Because our sin forced His loving-yet-just hand.
Another idea is that lent, in preparation for celebrating Jesus's resurrection day, is more for the purpose of focusing on praying, fasting, and generosity. I like that combination. I can figure out a way to work those things in to my next 40 days.
Others try to walk a sunnier path, suggesting Lent is a time to hone more positive skills like offering daily encouragement or random acts of kindness, or a cessation from complaining.
I think I could jump on any of those bandwagons. The quality of relational interactions and my thought life would certainly benefit at least a little.
Is that the point, though?
In light of the lengths God has gone through to enact toward us painfully sacrificial, yet passionate love to save us from sin's deep, dark, eternally isolated death, anything I "give up" , or positivity I try to practice during Lent seems SO lame!
I ask God and myself, "does it even matter if we DO ANYthing during Lent?" Its not a Biblical mandate.
I struggle each year over what we as a family "should" do during Lent. Everyone else seems to be doing something different or nothing at all. And that is okay.
I would like to think that we are part of a team, though, walking the same road during Lent. Jesus-followers, rag-tag bunch that we are, journeying 40 days together to come to a better, transforming understanding of who our Great Redeemer truly is.
Maybe I just need to get the team together.
Too late to do that this year.
So what do we need to focus on this year in our family? As I read the devotional attached below, I realize - AGAIN - that I have forgotten in the course of life to reflect on the weight and depravity of my own sin. My sin is not just a series of minor mistakes, trivial errors easily fixed, relational faux pas, selfish blunders.
The link attached below has an amazing way of taking the Scripture passage in Romans 7 and creating a visual that I can relate to about my sin and God's role in rescuing me if I let him. The truth is, my sin will take me under and drown any attempt at a "good" life at any moment. Drowning ME with my attempts. The power driving sin and all cunning deception that it is "not really so bad" is angry, destructive, horrifically evil. Yet daily I play with it's poison, thinking that because I walk around with this church-y label I'm protected from it's killing effects. Without Jesus, I have no hope at all. AT ALL.
http://ccca.biola.edu/lent/2017/#day-mar-2
For now, our family is fasting from gluten (wheat). Daily readings are from John Piper's "50 Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die". I've signed off Facebook til after Easter.
What we do with our time during Lent and our meager practices of the disciplines above is what will determine if any transformation takes place. Together, we'll spend some time reaquainting ourselves with the desperate-for-rescue, dark place our sin puts us in, how we act like God's enemy when we indulge our selfishness, and refamiliarize ourselves with how wonderful it is that through Jesus and His finished work on the cross on our behalf, we can confess our sin and be cleansed of all unrighteousness (I Jn 1:9).
No comments:
Post a Comment