Thursday, February 21, 2013

Cleanin' House

I've been a Protestant all my life. Although my father's familly and background were Catholic, my mother and her family were faithful Southern Baptists. Ha! Betcha didn't know there are Southern Baptists in Cuba. Well, there are! My teeth were cut in a church nursery, and I got "promoted" in Sunday School every fall. I was "dunked", not sprinkled, and our Sunday and Wednesday services were light on liturgy and ritual but heavy on tradition and fellowship. Easter was just one glorious day when the resurrection of Christ was celebrated, not the 40 days of preparation leading up to the event. However, as an adult, I've come to appreciate the traditions of other Christian faiths and I have to say that, among them, Lent is my favorite.

I remember thinking as a young adult that people's announcements of their Lent offerings made me slightly uncomfortable . Wasn't it a little pious to tell people that you were giving up ________ for Lent? And how important was it really that someone was going to abstain from drinking diet coke for a month? I don't know...It just didn't make a lot of sense to me. What I've learned since then though is that, while giving something up for Lent has the potential to be a lot like making a New Year's Resolution, there are few things more important than taking a serious, personal inventory so I can "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles" (Heb 12:1a). God intends me to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (12:1b) as disciples.

So...here are a few things you might need to take a break from for Lent or remove altogether from your life, for the glory of God:
  • Social Media
  • reading books other than The Bible
  • listening to gossip
  • computer games
  • R-rated movies
  • over-eating
  • hitting the snooze button
  • shopping for things that are not necessities
  • texting
  • staying up after your spouse has gone to bed
  • obsessing over how clean the house is
These aren't necessarily things one thinks about sacrificing for God, but isn't the point that we need to remove those habits, behaviors, TIME THIEVES that can cause us to give God less than our best selves? If that's the objective, what's getting in your way? Maybe it's time to give it the ol' heave-ho.

~Maria
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2 comments:

  1. AmyFebruary 21, 2013 at 5:00 PM

    Love this, Maria! Incidentally, when I became a Catholic in the early 90's, our very Irish Catholic Priest admonished us about "giving up coke and chocolate" for Lent. In his view, Lent was more about sacrificing for the good of OTHERS. In other words, taking the money you would have spent on chocolate and donating it to a soup kitchen... or, better yet, serving at a soup kitchen. The idea of a sacrificial Lent made so much more sense to me when looked at from that perspective. Still, to this day, even though I am no longer Catholic, I cringe internally when someone says they're giving up sweets until Easter.... but I guess it's a start. :-)

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  2. AnonymousFebruary 21, 2013 at 5:43 PM

    So true! Why not give a giftcard for a massage to a stressed out mom of preschoolers instead of buying myself another pair of shoes I love but don't need? And imagine the time I could give my family if I spent less time "unwinding" on Facebook and solitaire! I think it's all about removing yourself from the center of your universe and putting Christ back there where He belongs.

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