lenten challenge

I’m  nowhere near the torture and death of Jesus in my current talking-about-scripture project of progressing chronologically through the accounts of his life. However, it being the first day of Lent and the purpose of this blog being to get myself (and maybe a few others) to take to heart the command to talk about scripture when we get up and lie down and walk down the road and sit at the computer and so forth, I would like to issue a challenge: Talk about a specific passage of scripture with at least one person every day for the next forty days.

Here’s how the idea came about, in case you’re interested. I have been thinking for weeks about all the possible things I might give up for Lent this year. My nightly glass of wine. Meat (a reenactment of the Lents of my childhood in honor of my dad, who died this year). The Jodi Arias murder trial (which I’ve discovered I can access on my computer). Google. (My workstudy: “But don’t you need Google?” Me: “Sort of, but I need that glass of wine more.”)

 

None of these givings up seemed likely to succeed to me, and, if there’s one thing I was sure I wanted to give up this Lent, it was failing—as I always do—at giving something up.

So, at breakfast this morning, the first morning of Lent, I was thinking about this dilemma, and my husband, a CPA, started telling me about a conversation he had with one of his clients yesterday about the barn parable, where the guy stores up all this grain in his barn and then finds out he’s going to die the next day.

“What I don’t get is what’s wrong with that, storing up stuff for the future,” Kris's client said.

And so they struggled through it, landing on not the storing as the bad thing, per se, but thinking of oneself, not God, as the source of one’s security.

I so liked the idea of my husband—generally pretty private about matters spiritual—discussing scripture with some guy who came to him about his taxes and then afterward telling me about the discussion—in each case spreading scripture around to those he encountered—that I decided to do the same, at least once daily for the next forty days, as my Lenten discipline.

 

I’m determined to succeed this year. Join me!