Making Space

The focus so far has been on sacrifice, because so many common Lenten practices at least start there. But modern sensibilities, mine among them, acknowledge that life rarely provides so clean a distinction. Should a truly bad habit be identified, it should be quit, and not just for Lent, but for the rest of life. The person who can never achieve this has self-control issues that might need more than just a seasonal treatment. The person who repeatedly succeeds, eventually finds the list not wholly bad or not sufficiently motivating. Either person may find meaning in attempting to substitute a more spiritual activity for one less so. Thus is born the idea that it might be more pleasing to God that we form a new habit than give up something of little value.

But the sacrificial approach to Lent shares this very sentiment. The absence of what can no longer be enjoyed is the reminder needed to bring God's saving love to mind. A craving or a hunger pang cannot compare to His torture and crucifixion, but it can bring it to memory. That He became human, experienced every human need and wish, saw every human depravity and sin, healed physical and emotional disease, stood tall against oppression and hypocrisy and suffered humiliation, torture and death for His faithfulness, is proof that He desires an intimate relationship. And aspiring to put off worldly things to be more like Christ brings us closer to that relationship. There is so very much today that interferes, that separates us from Him and from one another. Giving up these things for a handful of weeks should certainly make plenty of space for the God of all nature.

Still, nature abhors a vacuum, a dictum true both physically and metaphysically. To be truly like Christ, we must not replace worldly habits with nothingness. His life was one of service to others, of rewarding faith, of understanding and lifting up the outcast, not one of sackcloth and ashes, or of monastic piety, or of let-me-get-it-right-first exclusion. To replace indulgence with forbearance is well and good, but to find and worship Christ in the eyes of our enemy, to lift the destitute to wholeness, to bring grace and forgiveness to a wicked world, these should be our fervent hope. To do any of these things well, space must be made in busy modern life, for sure. But that space cannot be guarded and preserved - it must be dedicated to Christ-like servanthood.

May God fill the space you make this Lent with His peace, hope and love.