Guest Writer Lynn Viale
Our Lenten disciplines can help us become more like Christ. Here’s a marker to see if we’re growing. Are we growing in love? Love of God, love of each other, love of ourselves. Everything we do in our lives can move us toward living out the great commandment – love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
There are three practices that traditionally have been associated with Lent – fasting, prayer and almsgiving or charity. In these practices we grow in our love of God through prayer, in our love and respect of ourselves as we fast or give up something to more fully focus on God’s love for us, and our love of others in our acts of charity.
Fasting: We’ve heard of people “giving something up” for Lent. When we do this, we are embracing a form of fasting. Some people choose to give up things like gossip or anger for Lent. In this way, Lent becomes a spiritual training time to be more loving toward others. And we may discover after the season of Lent that there truly is a change in our character, that we are growing more loving, and being transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Some people give up things they have a craving for, like sweets or caffeine. By giving these up, the person fasting learns to control a particular part of their life, which leads to greater self-discipline even when Lent is over. These things we give up can be our triggers to remind us of what we more deeply desire. Every time you feel a desire for that piece of chocolate, you remind yourself of your desire to be a more loving person. During Lent we have the opportunity to learn, examine, and practice letting go of the excesses and cravings in our lives.
Prayer: Lent is a good time to develop or strengthen a discipline of daily prayer. Contemplative prayer, based on the idea of silence or listening for God, is well suited to Lent. We often think of prayer as our list of requests that we give God, and we might add something we’re thankful for and something we praise God for.
These are a good and worthy part of our prayer life, but how about if you just sit quietly in your chair for 10 minutes each morning, breathing in, breathing out, being aware of the presence of God. This too is prayer. And you can carry this practice out into your day.
An awareness of the presence of God helps make us be more attentive to the beauty (as Pastor Ben reminded us of recently) and the needs all around us. It helps remind us that we need to be loving toward everyone we cross paths with during the day, to treat everyone with the utmost gentleness and respect, or as psychologist Carl Rogers says, unconditional positive regard – the woman who cuts us off in traffic or the guy being too slow in line ahead of us. Maybe after we’ve done this for 40 days, we will discover that silent attentive prayer is a great way to begin every day.
Almsgiving (Charity): While Lent, on one hand, is about giving something up, it is also about putting something positive in its place. The best way to remove the negative is to cultivate the positive. Lent has been a traditional time of helping the poor and doing acts of charity and mercy. While as followers of Christ, we see this as a year-round calling, Lent is a good time to examine ways to get involved and to set intentions and actually do them. Charity might include helping your family, friends, and neighbors; giving a listening ear to someone who needs to be heard, or being attentive to someone who needs to be seen.
40 Days to practice fasting, prayer and charity – then a lifetime to continue growing in this practice.