Lent 2012 – Day 4 (Saturday)

I woke up this morning thinking about what I wrote last night.  I suggested I would take these 40 days to pick up some new spiritual discipline.  So my first thoughts other than the rather mundane first thoughts of morning (taking care of “business”, taking care of dogs’ “business”, turning up the heat, getting the coffee pot going) was “just what new spiritual discipline do I want to take up, anyhow?”

The first one I thought of was fasting.  After all I thought, I can stand to lose some weight.  I immediately ruled that out for two reasons:  first of all, one might fast to lose weight, though that’s not a healthy idea, generally, and secondly, if one is taking up a spiritual discipline it should be for the purpose of deepening one’s relationship with God, not losing weight.  Besides, as a diabetic, I’m already watching carefully what I eat, and fasting would adversely complicate that.  (And that diet IS working… my average daily BGL is dropping steadily AND I’ve lost ten pounds.)

So, being the technophile that I am, I pulled up our friend, Google, and started doing a search for “spiritual disciplines for lent”.  Going to the first blog I saw, I was initially surprised by the fact that it was on WaPo!  And in the second sentence was my answer.

Do you recall that the week before Lent began, I wrote a serious of posts about Excel International de Colores, the retreat program I was involved in 10 years ago, or so?  Each of Excel’s four programs has as it’s basics a “tripod” theme… three topics that are the underpinning for that program.  Alas, I fear that I don’t recall all of them for each program.  But as a member of numerous “Excel 101” teams, how could I forget the three basic concepts of that program?  And each of them is a “Spiritual Discipline” in and of itself.  Without these three spiritual disciplines, without these three basic elements in our Christian walks, our lives are out of balance… or so I personally believe… it is for this reason that the way we most often choose to visualize these three concepts is with a 3 legged stool.  Try sitting comfortably on a 1 or 2 legged stool!

So, what are these three elements, these three spiritual disciplines upon which I believe our Christian walks depend?

My fellow Excellers who read this blog… please respond appropriately, either in comments to this post, or an email to me which I will then put in the comments to this post.

The three spiritual disciplines are:

Prayer — Study — Action …………. I’m waiting, Jerry & Karla…

Prayer: taking time each day to communicate with God, to share with our Creator what is happening in our lives, to thank and praise God for God’s presence and blessings, and most importantly to calm ourselves and quieten ourselves to listen for God’s response.

Study: taking time each day for reading scripture and other works of spiritual nature to deepen our walk with God, to mature in our belief and our faith in Him.

Action: to actively move out from focus on self to recognize our interrelationship and interdependence on all of God’s Creation around us.  “Whatsoever you do to / for the least of these, you do to / for me.”  Or, as James would tell us “be doers of the word and not merely hearers…” and again “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”  The whole discourse throughout the past several centuries has treated this topic as either or “Only by faith is one saved” “Only by works is one saved”.  Both statements are, in my opinion, myopic and, on their face, ridiculous.

As James states, if you have faith, but do not act on that faith, what good is it to you?  What does God care about that?  God says time and again throughout the entire collection of scripture that He doesn’t really care all that much for our sacrifices to Him (our faith)… what God wants is our justice and righteousness… our care for the oppressed and the poor and the stranger amongst us.

So this is my spiritual direction for the remainder of Lent… Prayer, Study and Action (I’m still waiting!)

What will I do each day to grow in prayer to God?  What will I do each day to grow in knowledge of my faith and my God? What will I do each day to act on my faith, to bring God’s justice to life for those around me?

Stick around, perhaps you’ll find out in the days ahead!

Now, let me ask YOU:  What, if anything, are you doing during Lent this year to draw closer to God? Are you taking on any new spiritual discipline?  I’d love to hear!