Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Lent
I've been spending some time struggling through some commitments for Lent this year. I started by doing the traditional giving up of something and though that was going well it wasn't really helping prepare me for Easter in any way. It ended up being really easy to give up what I chose. So, then I decided that I would try to be more intentional about spending time reading something "spiritual". I read a lot for my job and often that leaves me not wanting to spend more time reading, however that also means that I don't really practice the discipline of reading and studying. For the purposes of Lent I choose to read a spiritual classics book, however I was really struggling with it. I felt like a lot of it went over my head and I didn't feel like it was leading me into a spiritual experience. Then Jim gave me the book Praise Habit and I have been faithfully reading it every night. For a lot of people the idea of a daily reading is not a big deal, but for me that is really huge. It's something I honestly haven't done in a lot of years. I read novels and things for fun, but I am not good at reading spiritual things - however, so far Praise Habit is going really well and I am enjoying the challenges it is presenting and enjoying the time of study and reflection it provides.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I gave up dessert for lent (originally) and then realized I was just doing it to do it, it wasn't preparing me for Easter at all. I was just thinking, oh, I can't have that. So, I stopped giving up dessert, because I was just doing it really legalisticaly. I don't know why it was so hard this year. Probably because my brain is too dead to focus on anything! (thank you twin toddlers and embryo)
David Crowder wrote Praise Habit, right? I'm pretty sure that's the book I read--Praise Habit and then Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die. It was really good. If it's the Crowder book, anyway. =) I've read so many books sometimes they kinda run together, sadly.
For Lent...I know we're supposed to be trying to focus on the purpose of Easter and such, and it's been really difficult...I feel like I try to do that all the time--realize what God has done for me and IS doing for me. It's a daily thing--like Crowder talks about--to love and appreciate God. The hardest thing for me is to grasp that love isn't necessarily an emotion--God's Word says so often that love is obedience. But I feel like I should love God emotionally too--the way I love my family and my friends. I don't know if fasting is really helping me with this, but it's a sacrifice I'm making anyway--just because it's good to sacrifice things that you love in order to avoid idolizing or something. Dorky as it is, I totally gave up watching Lord of the Rings last year 'cause I would obsessively watch it, and after Easter, I didn't obsessively watch it anymore. I'm a dork, I know. But God loves me.
Post a Comment