Lent Post

Well yesterday was Ash Wednesday marking the beginning of lent, so here’s a post about, you guessed it, Lent. I’ve been doing some thinking, and instead of reiterating the whole “It’s not always about giving something up…” post, which is boring to do, I’ve got some more ideas. The whole point of Lent comes from Jesus’ journey into the desert in which he fasted for forty days. When tempted by the devil He kept to his fasting and at the end was refreshed by angels after His ordeal. Well the point of Lent isn’t to just give something up (while that is what you do), it’s to grow closer to God. Well, I’ve been doing some thinking, what does growing closer to God even mean? I’m a numbers guy (note not a math guy) I like statistics and measurements (like in baseball) so is there a way to measure closeness to God on a spiritual barometer? Well, yes and no. I used to think of our journey in faith as a sort of stepping away and towards God. Meaning that if I sinned I took a step away from God and by doing “good things” I took a step toward Him. Well the thing I’ve realized is that is not always true. While it is true that you can take steps away from God that doesn’t mean you are X distance from Him and to overcome it you need to take X steps back. Instead it’s more like this, when we accept Jesus and walk with God and are forgiven we are right there with Him. Now if we fall back and revert to sin we are farther from God, but when we are forgiven we are brought right back with Him. James writes “Draw close to God and He will draw close to you.” Growing close to God doesn’t mean we need to do good things to keep score. Instead it is making a daily choice to live as God commanded (going back to my earlier post on choices). If you think that every choice you make defines who you will be later in life then it makes more sense where you end up in relation to God than the keeping score idea. Think about it, if I never became a Christian I wouldn’t have this blog, who knows what I’d be doing! Thus the choices we make impact our closeness and relationship with God and also our lives. Instead of viewing Lent as a time to give up stuff (thus needing Mardi Gras to indulge in every possible thing before said giving up) we should focus on Lent, and  everyday life as making a conscience choice to simply apply the words of the Bible to our actions, then naturally we give things up, but willingly.