I just couldn't resist...

Most of you probably know that I need very little incentive to talk, or write, or even think, extensively on any issue. And for that reason, in response to Sam's comment on my last post, I will gladly offer more of my thoughts on Lent and sacrifice! :) Thanks, Sam, for your thoughts. And for your invitation to dialogue...be careful! You just might get what you asked for! (*grins*)

Part of me, like you, cringes at seeing Lenten vows become more like New Year's resolutions than sacrifices pleasing to a Holy God. I don't want this season to be my excuse to get rid of all the excesses I'm not motivated enough to get rid of during the rest of the year! That's like all the times I've arrived at church forgetting it's Communion Sunday, then upon seeing the bread & wine on the table at the front of the sanctuary, spending the first part of the service madly sorting through my heart in search for all the sins I may not have confessed so that I can partake without the weight of a guilty conscience. (And I have a feeling I'm not the only one who's ever done that before...) The "binging and purging" mentality so many people have of Christianity turns my stomach, and it makes me even more disgusted when I turn around the magnifying glass and see it in my own self. (And I'm afraid I see it in myself more often than I'd care to admit...) I don't want to use Christ's sacrifice as a salve for my guilty conscience - the Word did not become flesh in order to make me feel better about my life, but to draw all people to the Father, as a thief to steal the hearts of men and women and even children. To build a Kingdom on grace and love. To show us just how holy God created us to be, how devastatingly we all fall short, and then turn around and pave the way for us to be made holy through His own blood and His Spirit.

A love that is based on sacrifice is somewhat foreign to this world - or at least partly. We're OK when someone sacrifices out of love for us. But when we're called to sacrifice, that's quite another story! And yet when I think about sacrifice in the Christian life, I can't help but come up with two different kinds of sacrifice. One is the sacrifice of the "old self", the getting rid of things that are truly hindrances, the sifting and pulling and burning away the things that are unpleasing to God. This is a very necessary sacrifice, one we are called to make as followers of Christ! But this is not where it ends. We aren't only called to sacrifice the things we'd be glad to get rid of. We are also called to sacrifice good things - the best things, as you so well pointed out, things that we love and hold dear. This is the truest of all truths! The cost of discipleship is high, and it requires ALL of us, not just part; the surrendering of ALL things for the sake of gaining Christ. It involves being led where we may not want to go, as Jesus told Peter. And, for Lent, I think it is particularly significant that we give up something we enjoy.

Honestly, one of the main reasons I am giving up caffeinated beverages is because I enjoy them. A lot! I mean, I love chocolate, but I honestly don't eat it very often (maybe once a week, if I'm lucky), so it would feel kind of small to give up something I already mostly do without, anyways. Coffee, on the other hand, I drink every day, more than once. And while I have been realizing, now that I've stopped consuming caffeine, that I rely on it a lot more than I thought (as evidenced by my much-more-frequent yawning throughout the day...), I mostly just miss the taste of coffee, the feel of the warm mug in my hand while I'm answering the phone here at work, the comfortable part it has in my daily routine. Which is why I'm not even drinking decaf coffee during Lent. The awareness of my dependence on caffeine has certainly been eye-opening, and it is helping me learn what my limitations really are, (how much sleep I really need! hehehe...) but the primary purpose of my fast is not to get rid of something in my life that I see as being bad. It is because I live a fairly simple life, and there are very few things in which I take pleasure that are not crucial to my existence, my sanity, and my emotional/spiritual well-being at this point in time. I don't think that giving up any kind of food would be healthy for me right now, because I've been having a hard enough time eating healthily recently due to a lot of emotional stress. Other things I really enjoy? People - definitely can't give up people. :) Reading - I live alone, so if I gave up reading, I'd be stuck alone with my thoughts for far more time than I already do, and with where I'm at right now, that wouldn't be healthy, either. Music - I'd thought about it, but then again, I live alone, and music is one of the key ways in which I worship, in which I keep my focus on God instead of getting trapped in my own mind, thinking about things that would be best left alone. I gave up coffee so that, in missing something that I truly enjoy, which is part of my routine every day, I will have a reminder, whenever I crave it or miss it, that I need Christ in my routine that much more. And not just as another part of my routine, but permeating every single part of my routine. That, in the end, is the point of any sacrifice, I think - not the thing that is given up per se, but rather the space that is created in our hearts and lives for God to fill us more fully. Is that not what the Psalmist says? "'I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills'...You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." He doesn't want the things that I give up for Him. He doesn't need those things. He wants the ME, the YOU, that can be more fully His when we give up those things. When we sacrifice the bad habits AND the good things, to create more room in our lives for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to work and make us anew day by day.

Holy Spirit, come restore, renew! That is my Lenten prayer - only a magnification of what I long to be my prayer every day - "Lord, I lay all of me down as a sacrifice to You today. Take whatever pieces of me You need to take. Only give me Your love, Yourself, in return. Use me as You see fit." As Dan Holcomb put it so well, perhaps after a lifetime of Ash Wednesdays and Lenten seasons, that prayer will become ingrained in the whole of my life.

So there you have it, Sam - those are some of my thoughts, although I'm sure I could go on for a lot longer... :)