Lent, Round Two

By Joe Chambers

It's Lent again, which reminds me that a year has passed. My inaugural Lent experience was one year ago. I didn't participate, really. I just hung out and observed. Somewhere there's a digital archive holding the blog of my experience, which concluded with my hope that in the coming year I would be more inclined to join in.

Sad though it may be, I felt less inclined this year than last. It's slightly pathetic. There are a few reasons why I resist partaking in Lent. One is that I hate the idea of fostering a sense of depression just to make the joy of Easter more abundant. Today has enough troubles as it is, why drive myself to despair with self-inflicted difficulties?

The greater reason though, is that over the last year my level of spirituality has plummeted to new lows. I say this not so much as a lament, but more as an honest statement of fact. I could proceed to list my reasons, whether to repent or justify myself, but I'll refrain. Basically, in this season of my life (hooray for seasons), I find most spiritual disciplines annoying. Lent included. I guess I'm at a point where I question all the ideas of being "closer" to God due to any actions I would take. Right now I feel God to be more mysterious, and honestly, more distant/unknowable than ever before.

Still, in spite of my reluctance, I am a sucker for peer pressure. When everyone at church started talking about it, I felt like I should join in regardless of my misgivings. There's also the small fact that my girlfriend took up the Lenten discipline of reading the Bible daily. This is her first time to ever read it. She's already finished Mark, and has started on Genesis. When she first informed me of her plans, the repressed evangelical in my head began tearing his robes with guilt. And how did I atone for my shortcomings?

I decided to make a point to attempt to work out three times a week.
. . .Thus far I've managed to make it to the gym about 5 times, which puts me about 7 workouts behind schedule. This is the point where I could concede defeat, and reinforce my anti-liturgical tendencies by feeling guilty. Instead of that, it seems proper to wrap this up by stating what I'm learning:

First, it seems that lack of discipline in life-in-general precludes any chance of benefiting from specific spiritual disciplines. I haven't made it to the gym because I haven't managed to be efficient with school, and therefore I'm always playing catch-up with the time I would otherwise dedicate to everything from working out to praying.

Second, and most importantly, Easter is merely the extension of Lent. The problem we get ourselves into is thinking that Jesus' selflessness in his march toward the cross was something he conceded to do reluctantly. I don't get the idea Jesus was particularly excited about the prospect of dying by torture, but it seems that he was so compelled in his way in life that the threat of death was something he merely disregarded.

In other words, the joy of Easter is only an extension of the joy of Lent. Jesus' life, even in the shadow of his death, was not characterized by a bitter, muttering consent for the trials he would endure. It was an joyful extension of his faith in a loving God, even in the shadow of a cross. That same joy is continuous through his death into his resurrection. If Lent is depressing to us, then I hardly find it believable that Easter will manage to cheer us up. Our attitudes toward the trials of Lent extend into the dawn of Easter.

Thus, my difficulties in finding any enthusiasm for this time of the year can be traced back to the fact that it seems whether I add something for Lent, or take something away, it seems that life will be characterized by more of the same. Easter then is mediocre at best, and Lent a sequence of drudgery that precedes it. Obviously, it doesn't have to be that way. Realizations are seeds of change for the days to come. So, maybe, hopefully, Lenten realizations can transform heavy obligations into ways of rest.