Lent

The following is by Daniel Benedict and helps us continue in our Lenten season:


Lent is a time to prepare for Easter. It is a necessary prelude. The death and resurrection of Christ are true whether or not I prepare for Easter. However, without my heart and life being ready, I may not experience the depth and power of Christ's death and resurrection. So with my brothers and sisters, I commit myself to disciplines for conversion from sin and death to love and life in Jesus Christ. With the aid of the list below, I make the following commitments to discipline and growth for the next six weeks:

(Check the ones you desire or feel prompted to do; circle the ones you then decide to do.)

Inward and Personal Disciplines

___ Spend time in solitude each day.

___ Read a book for inner growth.

___ Begin to keep a journal of prayer concerns, questions, reading.

___ Focus on thanksgiving, rather than on asking, in prayer.

___ Give myself a gift of three hours to do something I always say I don't have time to do.

___ Find a way to go to bed earlier or sleep in so I get enough rest.

___ Make a list of people with whom I need to be reconciled. Pray for them and let Jesus guide me in my thinking and feeling toward them.

___ Go to all of the Holy Week services as an act of love and waiting with Jesus.

___ Take one hour to inventory my priorities and plan how I will reorder them.

___ Give up a grudge or a rehearsal of a past event.

___ Forgive someone who has hurt me.



Outward and Social Disciplines

___ Take on some loving task:

___ Plan to visit a "shut-in" neighbor or church member weekly.

___ Write a letter of affirmation once a week to a person who has touched my life.

___ Listen and respond to Christ's call to a ministry of service:

___ Go to coffee or dinner with someone I want to know better.

___ Begin to recycle waste from my home and workplace.

___ Give blood and recall the cross.

___ Say "NO" to something that is a waste of money and time.

___ Pray to God to help me resist racial prejudice and to give me courage in opposing it.

___ Decide to become a member of the church and speak to a pastor or lay leader.

___ Rebuke the spirit of criticism and my own tongue out of control.

___ Find a way to live out the baptismal promise to "resist evil, injustice, and oppression" in the power and liberty God gives us.