Lent is starting to wind down as the NCAA tournament starts to wind up, and once again I failed to participate in the tradition of Lent. (I am the instigator of my illegal office pool for the NCAA and have my bracket filled out on yahoo) Most of you know I have very specific aversion to doing anything because some other people did it before me (tradition) unless it has some other meaning to me (familial ties, direct ties to my other relationships, patriotic and sports ties to a much much lesser extent).
But this year I didn’t participate because of my aversion to tradition. No I just plain forgot. In fact, a couple weeks back while driving to IL for the wedding I listened to Dave Schmelzer preach about his churches 40 days of Faith. I was really taken by the idea of praying (and fasting) for something you want to happen during Lent, and then believing it will happen or that your desires will be changed to something God wants for you.
I think that adds a lot of value to Lent for me. Not because I want God to give me all this stuff, but because he already gave me something better than I could ever even think to ask for on Easter. Now I’m just asking for a part, or some small subset, of the full realization of the Easter gift.
Also, I was thinking, what do some of you get out of Lent. Especially my friends who are Catholic but aren’t necessarily interested in the other Catholic things. I’m not attacking, but this really made me think, “What are they getting out of not eating meat on Fridays.” Is it the feeling of being a part of something bigger than you…like a large group moving together. I would get that if it were the answer, but I was mostly just curious. I generally think even Christians wouldn’t do the nice (or worshipful things like lent) that they do if they weren’t getting something out of it down the road. I know for me being more changed all the time to enjoy serving and giving things away has been worth the effort, and I’m excited about the changes in my life that are yet to come. But I wouldn’t have started down this path if salvation didn’t look like it was worth the buy-in price. Of course I got like 1000% returns already, and I would never go back, but the point remains I ain’t doing this stuff for free.
That’s all for now…I’m glad I remembered one of those things I wanted to write about yesterday.
rschmit says
The meat stuff…eh, it’s all guilt related. Most of us feel bad about being bad Catholics and try and make up for it (Seth). Some of us have had to do this every year for as long as they can remember and would be completely lost without it (Me).
BigCat says
Cool, that makes sense.
I was just wondering…no judgement implied.
In general it isn’t often I devote quality thinking time to the positive benefits of Lent. So this was one of the first time it occured to me to ask.