February 15, 2023

How you live your life today is how you live your life.

I heard this quote the other day on a podcast I was listening to. I think it stuck out to me because Lent begins next week with Ash Wednesday.

You are all familiar with the Lenten tradition of a seasonal discipline; whether that is the discipline of abstinence (abstaining from sweets, television, social media, coarse language, etc.), or whether it's a discipline of acquisition (daily prayer, reading scripture, healthy eating, exercise, attending worship, etc.), the idea is to use our chosen disciplines to draw closer to God. We shouldn't opt for a discipline simply to be miserable for 40 days in order to celebrate a return to “normal” on Easter. Instead, these disciplines of abstinence or acquisitions should be taken on with some forethought as to how a particular change will draw us closer to God.

Maybe you tend to snack without thinking. Maybe you might think that abstaining from sweets/snacks will help your overall health. Maybe not buying snacks gives you some extra money. Maybe you answer God's call to feed the hungry by donating that money to the food bank or Micah's Backpack. There are any number of ways that your discipline of abstinence or acquisition can be used to move your focus from the self to God and/or those around you.

The overall goal of a Lenten discipline is to change our overall behavior for the long-term.

But if we really pay attention to the above quote, it's telling us something interesting (and probably something we've all heard before in a different form): the past is gone, the future doesn't exist, and there is only this moment.

We don't live in the past. We can't live in the future. We can only live moment-to-moment in the present.

Doing things to change how we live in the future isn't really the point of making changes, whether they be Lenten disciplines or New Year's resolutions. It is only by changing how we live our lives today that will determine how we will live our life.

As you begin to prepare for Lent and a discipline of abstinence or acquisition, spend some time discerning how you would like to live your life today; and then abstain from or acquire one thing that will help bring you closer to God today.