So Lent’s rolled around again, as evidenced in the pancake displays in supermarkets across the land and the sudden deluge of church press releases on a variety of lenten campaigns.
People are doing the annual self-deprivation thing. Colleagues are giving up alcohol, connexional biscuits and taking on morning prayer, walking to work, making time to spend with God; my sister’s giving up shopping for unnecessary items; facebook friends are going veggie or even giving up facebook!
Two years ago in one of my early blog posts, I ranted on the subject of giving stuff up for lent, so I won’t repeat myself. I still feel quite strongly about the subject and I’m not giving up anything or taking something new on because actually I don’t think that’s the point, and I’ve got a lot of my own missions/resolutions going on:
I’m still continuing my ‘advent mission’ to give up free papers on my commute & read proper books. It’s going well so far, though the idea was to get through my pile of Christian lit, which hasn’t really happened yet, although I am alternating fiction & non-fiction. But I can recommend Dawn French’s biog Dear Fatty and Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon. (Wasn’t quite so keen on Lionel Schriver’s The Post Birthday World, though probably just because its London geography was flawed.) My current read’s Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go which 40 pages in is holding my attention.
My new year decisions (not resolutions!) are going strong. I’m keeping up with the one year Bible, though inevitably there have been days when I’ve had to do 3 lots in one go. My mystery decision has been acted upon, though I’m still procrastinating about the next step. There’s also my random decision to not think about something from Feb 1st – April 1st. I’ll say no more, but it’s hard & it’s not going well!
However, despite my cynicism about the practice of ‘giving up’, there is sense in remembering why this season exists in the first place. The temptations in the desert were a time of testing, of getting closer to God and listening. So maybe it’s just time to get back to what Lent’s really about: prayer.
I’m not good at it. But, just as I’m gaining a new liking for daily Bible reading, maybe I can get better at the prayer thing too. I was quite inspired by something Carla wrote today about the power of prayer in getting on with work. It sounds so obvious, but we don’t always think of it – or, at least I don’t.
We should count ourselves lucky that prayer is at least something we all have the freedom to do. One of my vivid memories of the ‘holy sites’ bit of my trip to Israel Palestine was our experience of the monastery on the Mt of Temptations. In the very place where Jesus was tempted (or believed to have been), an orthodox monk forbade us from praying because none of us were orthodox. Therefore I prayed, hard, under my breath. Probably not best to pray in revenge…but I had to pray in that place, right then.
Anyway, my point is Lent = prayer. End of story.
Things people have said: