lent

I grew up in a predominantly Catholic small town. I am not here to bash Catholicism, but I will say that many examples of people living out the Catholic faith have left me fairly jaded on several of its stances and traditions. One of these is Lent. I've never given anything up for Lent. I guess I just saw too many of my peers in high school give up ice cream for Lent, only to eat gobs of frozen yogurt and one girl in particular who didn't realize until our senior year that the pepperoni on her pizza constituted a meat, thus being an unacceptable Friday lunch. I saw Lent used as a dieting tool many times, saw it used as a contest even, but have had a hard time viewing it as anything related to Jesus.

This year, I'm trying to change my own perspective on that.

I already knew the whole self-denial portion of Lent. What I didn't know, though, was that prayer, repentance, and giving to others are other traditional parts of it. I knew it tied in with the whole Easter season, but I've never thought about how truly living out Lent could prepare my heart for celebrating Easter. I understood the connection to the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, but I've never taken the time to think on how he uses God's Word to combat temptation and how I can, too.

This year, Eric and I are experimenting with the whole Lenten season thing. We've decided to give up drinking everything but water. No Diet Coke, no coffee, etc. Anne Jackson discusses this idea here and suggests giving what you would have spent on other beverages. I'm trying to amp up my prayer life, trying to let my desire for a coffee in the morning fuel my desire to grab my Bible instead. And I'm looking forward to celebrating Jesus' miraculous resurrection all out this year!