......"I'm doing this for a reason. This is a fast, a major reduction of the endless possibilities that accompany my every meal. It is supposed to be uncomfortable and inconvenient. Not because I'm a narcissist, but because the discomfort creates space for the Holy Spirit to move." Today is Fat Tuesday. Happy Fat. Happy Binge.
Last year was the first year I ever acknowledged, participated in or even observed Lent whatsoever. I went to an Ash Wednesday service at a local Catholic church - literally one block over from the Baptist church I attend. It was uncomfortable and weird and nothing like the services I attend each week, but I appreciated the tradition and the reverence and the peacefulness of it all. It was a necessary sobering. It was just different.
This year the Baptist Church I attend is actually going to hold it's own Ash Wednesday service at 7:00pm tomorrow night. There will be communion and prayer and readings. There will, indeed, be ashes as well.
As I prepare my heart and look toward tomorrow and the next forty days of Lent- I struggle with what exactly it is I need to sacrifice this season. I feel like I need to lay it all down really and wait patiently in prayer as I ask God what I can pick back up again. I guess my depravity is being brought to light and it's okay to be reminded. I need to be reminded, as long as I don't go to the extreme opposite end and begin to wallow in my self doubt and the fact that as long as I'm in this flesh I will not ever be completely whole.
My focus needs to be on Christ, not on myself. Not on what I can give up or get rid of or do for Christ. It's about emptying myself so that there will be space for God to move. That in the voids and gaps and sacrificing God can speak truth into me. Teach me something more about himself and about where he's leading me during this journey.
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As my life continues to prove that my likes and personality and friends and books and classes and education are all intertwined and are very much a part of my character... Chris bought a book on Amazon called "7" and gave me a quick Readers Digest synopsis. Then I read about the same book and the same author on two of the blogs I frequent. So, since I like these bloggers - even though I've never met the girls themselves- based on their comments and the fact the book was sitting on a shelf in my home, I thought I should give it a read. I like it when my personality and writings and musing and habits and hobbies all sort of mesh. It's reaffirming to me as a person that I'm not a complete mess!! There is some order in there somewhere.
This book is really good stuff. Eye opening, heartbreaking, honest-filled stuff. This book convicts, and I'm only just starting Chapter Two.
Jen has shed light on our ungratefulness, indulgences, excess, wastefulness and gluttonous in America. It was also earth shattering to hear that I am among the top 1% of wealthy people in the world. I make more money than ninety-nine percent of the world y'all! I live in the richest city in one of the richest (if no the richest) country in the world. This book has already rocked me deeply as we head into the season of Lent.
"On the way to contemplation we do the same thing Jesus Christ did in the wilderness. Jesus teaches us not to say, "Lord, Lord," but to do the will of his Father. What must primarily concern us is that we do what Jesus has bidden us do. Jesus went into the wilderness, ate nothing for forty days, and made himself empty... Of course, emptiness in and of itself isn't enough. The point of emptiness is to get ourselves out of the way so that Christ can fill us up. As soon as we're empty, there's a place for Christ, because only then are we in any sense ready to recognize and accept Christ as the totally other, who is not me." Simplicity, Richard Rohr
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