Lent!

Jess: Well, it's that time of year again. It seems like it got here a lot faster than last year. LENT. That wonderful season in the Christian liturgical calendar that has many meanings and many purposes and many biblical precedents. It's 40 days of thinking about how bad we are...40 days of giving something up so we'll lose weight, save money, or some other great benefit...40 days of being sad and not saying Hallelujah (at least for Lutherans)...40 days of what? I don't think any of the above ideas are really that fantastic, but Lent is a hard thing to pin down. My personal favorite way of looking at it (this year, at least) is as a season of contemplation. It's a time to reflect on ourselves, the world, sin, etc. It's the dark night before the dawn, when we recognize our own faults, so that we can rejoice in Jesus' coming and his saving work. It is, like the whole year, a time to think about what God has done and continues to do for us.

Many people give things up for Lent. I myself have, in the past, given up sweets, TV, talking for an hour each day, and much more. I think that the purpose of giving something else has to be carefully discerned. Many people use this as a time to kind of test out a New Year's Resolution that didn't go so well. To give something up for 40 days seems doable. It's something you can count down. But that's not the point of giving something up for Lent. I'm not sure where the practice started, but I know it's not about giving something up so that you will be forced to eat healthier, thereby allowing you to lose weight. In fact, I stopped giving up sweets after the year that I lost 5 pounds over Lent. I knew that my motivations from then on would not be the right ones.
We had a professor in college who ranted against giving something up for Lent, but I wasn't really listening then. Now I realize he has some good points. If eating sweets is bad for you and you want to be healthier, just don't eat sweets. Don't try to do it out of some sort of religious obligation. If you want to learn how to watch less TV, just stop watching as much TV, don't try to make it seem like you're giving it up for Jesus. So giving something up for Lent is pretty tricky. Ever since we got married, Wes and I have been trying to do a Lenten discipline, which we see as a horse of a different color. Perhaps it's still a little cheesy or lame or not quite the point of Lent, but I'd like to think we're at least making a step in the right direction...
Two years ago, we each took on a prayerful devotion time. I read through the Gospel of Mark in Greek and reflected on it throughout the season. Wes did a prayer time while I did that. Last year, we added a Sabbath to our week--from 2 p.m. on each Saturday, we would do no homework, church work, etc. Our goal wasn't to just sit around and watch TV, either. We cooked dinner together, went on walks, spent time talking, and more. I wish we had added some sort of prayer component to it, but it was really a time of refreshment. It reminded us to slow down, that getting everything done is much easier when you include rest.
This year, we're doing something a little different. We're going to model our discipline off a book I read a couple of years ago called Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. I would encourage everyone to read this, or one of the many blogs about being more frugal that you can find by searching "The year without spending." We're not going to be buying anything new, going out to eat, or otherwise spending money for the season of Lent. That means no random stops for ice cream, no extra purchases when we're out grocery shopping--just the basics. The woman in this book definitely takes it to the extreme, even to the point of only buying the cheapest version of everything when she gets food. To make sure that we don't use this as a way to just save money for ourselves, we're going to donate the money that is normally allocated in our budget to this kind of stuff. I'll let Wes talk some more about our plans, because I've been going on too long already!

Wes: So everyone knows that Lent is that special time of year when you give up something you love as a sacrifice to Easter Bunny so that he brings you delicious chocolates and eggs containing a small amount of pocket change. In the olden days, Lent was first observed by entire communities sacrificing all of the young men and women who had reached the coveted age of maturity. Adolescents of both genders joyously threw themselves into smoldering volcanic pits while the elderly and the young cheered from a safe distance away. When whole civilizations were wiped out due to illness and the fact that no one was procreating, neighboring aborigine societies decided that it might be within their best interests to instead give up chocolate and Facebook for a forty-day span. The dreaded Rabbit of Resurrection accepted this paradigm shift, and the ritual has remained unchanged for millennia. 

So, with the weight of thousands of years of tradition bearing me down, here is a list of items that I have given up for Lent in the past:

• Soda.
• Chocolate and other forms of candy.
• Facebook. 
• Pizza.
• Gum. (This one was particularly hard because at the time I was utterly addicted to rubber)
• Ice Cream. 
• All forms of dessert. 
• Video Games.
• School. (This one was vetoed almost immediately by the powers that be--my parents)
• TV
• Multiple combinations of some/all of the above.

During my senior year of high school, I decided to try something different. A friend of mine covenanted with me to spend each Wednesday lunch period in one of the band practice rooms. We would fast during the lunch hour and pray for every student, faculty member, and staff member of the school. After having to pass a background check and go before the school board to promise that I did not want the names for any maligned purpose, we set out on our mission. My friend didn't last the entire time, and to be honest there were certain days when I would sneak a bite of a granola bar before dinner, but we tried our best, and I can personally attest that every person in the school was prayed for by name at least once during that 40-day span. 

It was a wonderful experience for me, and it led to a shift in how I understood and approached Lent. From that point on, I've tried to either add something new and exciting like this prayer experiment or at least tried to make sure that when I do take away something for Lent, I replace it with something awesome, like intentional prayer time anytime I feel the itch to update my status.

This year will be challenging. There are times when I just really want a Starbucks drink or a fountain soda. But I'm going to try my hardest to live as simply as possible--not just to cut out the extra fluff from my life, but because I'm hoping that it helps me see just how much I have and how blessed I am. I know that I take much in my life for granted, and that I rely on the extravagance of my middle-class situation much more than I rely on the extravagance of my God. I want to change that. 

I hope that this will end up being a wonderful experience for Jess and I, and I hope that in some way it continues even after Lent, that we might live simply in our extravagance, and give God all of the glory for the things we so often and so readily take for granted. 

So whatever you do for Lent, I pray that it is a meaningful experience for you. I pray that you'll be able to see it for what it is--a discipline--and I pray that God will be blessed by you through it while God blessed you through it. 

Also, Happy Ash Wednesday!

You stay classy, World Wide Web!

-jess and wes