The first time I heard of the season of Lent was when I was in Bible College. I had grown up in Baptist and E-Free circles, where the only ‘church calendar’ stuff was Christmas and Easter (and sometimes some candle lighting for Advent).
The season of Lent is the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Saturday (the Sundays don’t count). This is traditionally a time for self denial, fasting, prayer, etc. While I was in college, the other guys in my dorm would do things like give up pizza or give up TV or lunches or desserts or other activities/things. One guy gave up the use of his right hand while eating. The purpose of all this self denial was a form of spiritual discipline. Giving up useless or harmful things to make them more mindful of God.
While these exercises were useful, it seemed odd to me that the guy who gave up pizza went back to eating pizza every day once Easter had gone by. The reason he gave it up was because it wasn’t good for him. Why go back? The same could be said of many of the things people were fasting from. Why not make permanent changes?
Last year, I tried something different. I gave my family a 40 Day Lent challenge (I’m under the impression I came up with this myself, my apologies if others have had the same idea). I put a chart on the wall, listing the 40 days of Lent, with a box beside each day. The challenge is to do 40 things during Lent that will help us as a family to be closer to God. Here’s what counts:
- Get rid of something. Garbage or charity. The principle here is that for everything we own, we subconsciously keep mental and emotional tabs on it. It can actually be draining to have too much stuff. (how many people spend all sorts of emotional energy worrying about their cabin at the lake, or the boat, or the whatever; even if they are not using it or are not there). It can hurt to get rid of things, but you get over the pain, and feel liberated afterwards. This category was used often. At first, we would throw away one item, and mark it down. By the end of Lent, we were marking down entire collections in one day “purged unwanted clothing,” etc. And it was liberating. My kids have said they don’t even remember the things we got rid of. Shows how little we needed them!
- Stop doing something. Is there an activity/task that you do that actually gets in the way of your higher priorities? Stop doing it. Resign. Unsubscribe. Delegate. Delete. Remove a self-inflicted committment. Simplify. Stop labeling yourself a fan of something so that you feel obligated to keep up with it (and guilty if you don’t). Perhaps something seemed a good idea when you started, but it’s been going for too long or is less useful now, or is stealing time from other more important activities. And I’m not talking about being irresponsible- my kids asked if they could give up school for Lent (I said “no”). A better example: my ipod came with an app called “apps gone free”. If you check it every day, you may find a useful little program for free that would otherwise cost money. I recognized that checking this app had become a daily routine, with the result that I was never satisfied with the apps I had, but was always looking for the buzz of finding a nifty new free app. The app nurtured discontent. I’ve been much happier with my ipod since I’ve gotten rid of the “apps gone free” app, and just go about life with what I’ve got. (And I can already almost hear someone protesting “But what if you miss out on the…” Don’t care. I’m happy. Ignorance is bliss. Not worth the dissatisfaction that goes with it.)
- Start doing something. Are you missing an essential discipline for your Christian life? Don’t pray? Don’t read your Bible? Don’t go to church? Haven’t been baptized? Seems a good time to start. Maybe something needs to be revamped or re-evaluated.
- Upgrade something. Has the such-and-such been bothering you for awhile? Fix it. Replace it (and no, the old one isn’t still useful, throw it away. That’s what “replace” means). Isn’t that less stressful to finally have that dealt with?
- Streamline/organize something: Is there conflict over kids and kitchen chores? Start a system to reduce the conflict. Last year our family developed the “chore chart,” and we now have far fewer frustrations in the kitchen. Frustration does not cultivate the fruits of the spirit.
- Finish something. Been meaning to get to something? Partial project lying around? Can’t bring yourself to give up and get rid of it? Take the time to finish it, so it won’t bother you anymore.
We found these sorts of things reduced our mental energies/worries. This clears our minds to be able to think about God more. Isn’t that the point of fasting?
When I introduced the Lent challenge to my family last year, I hung the chart low on the wall so that the kids could read it. An unexpected result of this decision was that I always had to be on my knees whenever I wrote down in a box what we got rid of that day. This seemed a prayerful attitude. As if I was giving it up for God’s glory.
Another principle we used to help us think: the medium is the message. If we own an item, we are endorsing it. We threw away a lot of movies last year during Lent. That was probably the most memorable/painful/spiritually significant part of last year. Wasn’t that expensive? Yes, but we decided that wasn’t a good enough reason to keep them around. I took my cue from Acts 19:19, where converts were burning their (expensive!) magic scrolls. How much compromise were we allowing into our Christian lives by owning a particular movie or book or CD or toy?
An interesting phenomenon is the emotional attachment we give to things. At the merest suggestion that maybe we don’t need some forgotten item, we’ll start using it again out of a sense of loyalty. Why do we do this? We can’t bear to see it given away? Sentiment? Memories? I’m naturally a pack rat. My natural state is to be emotionally invested in absolutely everything and to therefore keep absolutely everything. When my wife and I first met, I had a box of pencil stubs. I had kept every single pencil since grade 1, because there was still a bit of lead in it. Some were sharpened right down to the metal at the back, and you got an instant writer’s cramp when you used them. But I wasn’t using them. They were in a box. I was actually using longer pencils. When it comes down to it, the small pencils weren’t actually useful anymore. I had stopped using them long ago (the moment each of them went into the box, in fact). I got rid of the box after much coaxing. Years later, I still keep pencils as long as possible. The shortest one my desk right now is 7cm long, but I still use it, and will throw it away when I stop using it (hopefully). There’s no box of dead pencils anymore.
So I’m not suggesting getting rid of your wedding photos. I’m suggesting getting rid of your box of stubby pencils. They won’t make you happy, anyway. Lasting joy and fulfillment only comes from God, so we should make room to pursue that.
Seminary Journey 