So What Is Lent?

People ask me this all the time.  I wanted to share with you some of the details about this season in order to help you understand it and to give you the knowledge to sound smart if someone asks you that question.

Many Christians throughout the world observe Lent. Catholics, Orthodox, and many Protestants look forward to this annual time of sacrifice and simplicity. For non-Christians, Lent can be a bit of a mystery. To some, Lent is a period of going on a diet; to others, it is when Catholic co-workers show up to work with ashes on their heads, and fast food restaurants start selling fish sandwiches.

Lent is meant to be a season of fasting, self-denial, Christian growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. Lent, which comes from the Teutonic (Germanic) word for springtime, can be viewed as a spiritual spring cleaning: a time for taking spiritual inventory and then cleaning out those things which hinder our corporate and personal relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to him.  Thus, it is fitting that the season of Lent begins with a symbol of repentance: having ashes mixed with oil placed on one's head or forehead. It is important to remember that our Lenten disciplines are supposed to ultimately transform our entire person: body, soul, and spirit.  There are a few basic rituals that have traditionally been associated with Lent.  Many of these (fasting, almsgiving, and prayer) have a long history.  In addition, reading the Scriptures and the Church's Writings can help foster growth during Lent.

Let’s take a closer look at the beginning of Lent.  Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday. It comes from the word "shriving" meaning confession and absolution. Traditionally, this was a day when Christians would confess their sins in preparation for Lent. It is a custom to eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. This probably originated because of the ingredients in pancakes: oil, eggs, and butter, which were forbidden during Lent. Making and eating pancakes was an easy and convenient way to get them out of the house before Lent began. Shrove Tuesday is also called "Fat Tuesday," which is what Mardi Gras means. It is called this because many took it to be the last time to party before Easter. However, the Church has traditionally tried to discourage the carnal and material celebrations of Shrove Tuesday.  In the Western Church, Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, a mixture of ashes and consecrated oil is imposed on the heads or foreheads of the faithful in the sign of the cross. The symbolism is rooted in the Old Testament (and sometimes early Church) practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes to symbolize penitence. It also symbolizes our being ashes and dust, our mortality.

In the course of a year, the Church celebrates the unfolding of the mystery of Christ, beginning with Advent, the anticipation of his first coming, and reaching a high point at Easter, the feast of feasts, the celebration of Christ's resurrection. Throughout the Church Year, which includes the seasonal, daily, and yearly cycles of Christian time, we commemorate and participate in events in the lives of Jesus and his followers, through sanctified time. Thus, we experience in symbol what Jesus and his followers experienced in reality.  Join me in making this season of Lent a meaningful spiritual journey!

There's An APP For That! - Part 8

In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. (Although she’s now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatin. “I know I shouldn’t like them,” she says. “But they’re just so delicious!”) A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he'd come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.

Although Carolyn has no direct memory of the experiment, and the scientists would not release any information about the subjects, she strongly suspects that she was able to delay gratification.   Most of the children in the experiment struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes.

Dr. Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill needed to delay gratification was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten.

Self-control is a fundamental character strength.  It is also a gift from God offered to us as a fruit of the Spirit.  This experiment highlights the fact that if we focus on Jesus instead of earthly desires, we too can delay gratification in search of heavenly treasures.

I pray that each of us will download the APP of Self-Control and “turn our eyes upon Jesus.”  God bless you!

There's An APP For That! - Part 7

Being gentle is part of God’s character and this virtue is highly treasured by God: "a gentle and quiet spirit…is of great worth in God's sight.”  But what is it?  I believe that we really do not understand what Biblical gentleness is.

There are several words in the Greek which are translated "gentleness." One is a word which comes from two words which mean "fitting" and "into."  Putting them together we come up with "fitting into" or better still, "appropriate."  We must learn to be appropriate. This would include manners, ethics, etc.  If we learn to “better fit into” people’s lives, then like Jesus, we too can meet them where they are and share the love of God with them.

The story is told that Abraham Lincoln was once eating at a formal banquet when a fellow next to him poured his coffee into his saucer and drank from the saucer. The elite audience was shocked at such a gesture. Abraham Lincoln realized the man's embarrassment and likewise poured his coffee into his saucer and began to drink from it.  This is Biblical gentleness.

An additional translation of "gentleness" in the Bible is "firm care." This is found in II Timothy 2:24, "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient." Gentleness is not weakness. It is not even what the average person calls meekness. It is not softness. Gentleness is firmness. Gentleness is strength. It is love wrapped in character.  It shows itself as a mother’s loving discipline with her children.

 

Still another word used in the New Testament for gentleness could be translated "evenness."  We have learned that meekness is not looking down upon or up to anyone, not thinking ourselves better or worse than anyone, not thinking of ourselves at all, but looking at everyone equally.  Now gentleness could be called "the acting out of meekness."  Meekness is a feeling that we have toward all men; gentleness is the acting out of that feeling.  It is the laboratory of the theory of meekness. In other words, there should be evenness in our handling of people.  We should be as nice to the poor as to the rich. We should be as courteous to those who need our help as to those who help us.

How do we live out Bible gentleness?  We must make an effort to better “fit into” the lives of the people around us.  We must use “firm care” in our relationships.  We must demonstrate “evenness” by seeing and treating all people as equal.  Do our words and actions express gentleness to all people, or are we gentle to some but harsh with others?

There's An APP For That! - Part 6

Valentine’s Week is a great time to be talking about faithfulness!  God has shown us through his word and by giving us role models what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and what it means to be faithful in marriage.  What is faithfulness?  Faithfulness: The quality of being faithful. The word 'faithful' means loyal, full of faith or trust; firmly and resolutely sticking with a person, group, cause, belief, or idea, without waver.  Other words in the word-field of 'faithful' include true, constant, loyal, steadfast, devoted, staunch, and trusting.

Loyalty and faithfulness may sound like mundane, old-fashioned concepts, but research shows they are vital to emotional and physical health. Married people live longer, more productive, healthier, and happier lives, especially if their marriages are happy and monogamous.  People who are married and faithful in their relationship have a big advantage. Being in a good and faithful relationship confers huge benefits on people.

Our God is faithful, trustworthy, and believable.  GOD’S faithfulness to his people is a great benefit.  God can be trusted to keep his promises, and we can count on him to be there for us no matter what.  How often can we say this about the people in our lives or even ourselves?  As we say our I LOVE YOU’S this week, let us commit to being faithful to those we say we love!  This will make God smile and do our hearts good!

God loves you and so do I!

There’s An APP for That! - Part 5

God has APPS available for each of us to download in our hearts.

One exciting APP is GOODNESS!   Goodness: the state or quality of being good, especially morally good or beneficial. In a sense, it's the quality of having quality.  Other words in the word-field of goodness: beneficial, gainful, useful, helpful, profitable, and excellent.  Moral "goodness" is grouped with words such as uprightness, virtue, benevolence, worth, value, generosity.

What is Goodness?

You see goodness when someone is consistently seeking your good or those of another ahead of their own. Goodness is not just a matter of being good or doing good or being taught goodness -- the teaching feeds the doing, the doing feeds the being, the being enables us to grasp the teaching, which feeds into more doing and being. Jump in at any point to start the cycle.

Jesus spoke a lot about false goodness, about how many leaders of the faith are putting on Oscar-worthy performances of their own goodness in front of an audience of God or their community. God's not impressed. And "fake it 'til you make it" doesn't make it before God. Mark Twain once wrote that it is "very wearying to be good". It takes work to be consistently good, because it's so thoroughly against our natural inclinations.

The root of all goodness is the goodness of God. Sounds simple, right? But there is a problem with what we think of as 'good'. We think, "If God is good, He'll do good things for us!" And what do we think of as good? We define it as acquiring material wealth, having things go our own way, instant healing of our ills, and the removal of suffering.  But God’s goodness may include humility, suffering, loss, service, and maybe even boredom.  The things we think of as the gifts of a good God may well be the most important things for us not to have. God's goodness is defined by God's love. God's goodness is goodness; it is our expectations that must change in its light.

Goodness has a way of setting things straight. When we see other people being good or doing well, it often reminds us of how short we fall.  The exposé can be quite a shock, puncturing our self-image.  Even when we do good, goodness may have nothing to do with it. While nothing entirely gets rid of this tendency in our lives, God has given us a way to face up to it: through confession.  This not only opens us for God's response to our un-goodness, it also brings about a more truthful self-image. The only way to increase our goodness is to know what ways we're flawed so we can replace that with goodness.

Well, what are you waiting for, do something for goodness' sake!

There’s An APP for That! - Part 4

God has APPS available for each of us to download in our hearts.

One exciting APP is KINDNESS!   God understands what His children need in their lives that will move them closer to Christ.  Kindness is something that all of us would like more of in our lives. 

Kindness is the act or the state of being kind.  It is marked by goodness and charitable behavior, mild disposition, pleasantness, tenderness and concern for others. It is known as a virtue, and recognized as a value in many cultures and religions:

• The Talmud claims that "deeds of kindness are equal in weight to all the commandments."
• Paul of Tarsus defines love as being "patient and kind..." (I Corinthians).
• In Buddhism, one of the Ten Perfections (Paramitas) is Mettā, which is usually translated into English as "loving-kindness". Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama wrote "my religion is kindness" and authored a book entitled "Kindness, Clarity, and Insight".
• Confucius urges his followers to "recompense kindness with kindness."
• Kindness is listed as a fruit of the Spirit in Galations 5.  

The world tells us that behavior doesn’t matter as much as results.  Winning matters!  It’s one of the worldly games of life.  Christians are in another game of life, an eternal game.  Our rules and our goals are different.  We live in the world but we do not follow the rules of the world because they do not have eternal value.   The values in the Bible are the ones that are eternal.  It is these that we adhere to.   God promises to be kind to us and asks that we practice kindness to one another and the environment we live in.

If this is an APP for you, then simply pray for God to come and install this gift of KINDNESS from the Holy Spirit into your heart and watch your relationships transform in front of your eyes!

God loves you and so do I!

There’s An APP for That! - Part 3

God has APPS available for each of us to download in our hearts.

One exciting APP is PEACE!  This is something that all of us would like more of in our lives.  The peace that God is offering us is so different than what the world offers.  The world is not waiting to offer us peace.  Just look at the breaking news of the day; “Bombing at the airport in Moscow” (1-24-11), to see the destruction and hatred that has infiltrated humanity.  Everywhere we look we can find signs of strife and disharmony. 

So what is this PEACE that God is offering us?    Maybe it’s a world full of relationships that operate harmoniously and without violent conflict.  Probably not!  The peace the world offers us is only deliverance from tribulation; the peace that God offers us is the result of deliverance from self!  The peace offered by God gives us quiet and rest in our hearts in the midst of the trials of life.  Now that’s the kind of PEACE I want in my life.  How about you?  Wouldn’t it be nice to feel peaceful when the society around you is in chaos?

If this is an APP for you, then simply pray for God to come and install this gift of PEACE from the Holy Spirit into your heart and watch your relationships transform in front of your eyes!

God loves you and so do I!