The season of Lent is a call to the dessert. The traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are proven ways in which the Christian can make room for grace. Prayer, especially those forms of prayer characterized by listening, opens our minds and hearts to the word God wishes to speak to each of us. Fasting helps us, to use modern psychological lingo, rid ourselves of our dependence on all the ways we numb ourselves through “self medication”. Almsgiving reminds us that all we have belongs to God and that no discipline can call itself Christian that does not somehow involve love of neighbor. Silence, emptiness and mutual dependence are the essence of life in the dessert.
Like Jesus, we will be tempted to turn our backs on this discipline. We all here those voices that tell us we deserve the $5.00 latte, that we don’t have time for prayer and that the panhandler will only buy cheap wine with the money I give him. Fortunately for us, the salvation of the world does NOT depend on our ability to say a resounding no to the temptations we face. In fact, nothing depends on us observing Lent at all except that perhaps, the abundant grace so freely given to us, might find a little extra room in our hearts.
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