A popular slogan today is, “No off-season!” In the world of sports we live in presently if one takes off too much time they are being passed by the next guy. Brooks Robinson famously coined, “If your not practicing, somebody else is, and he’ll be ready to take your job.” Hence, “No off-season!” Another reality is that elite sports are year around; gone are the days of the three sport stars. It’s not as though the athlete today is incapable of playing three different sports; it is that they don’t have the time to work at another sport in order to play it at an elite level. It takes year around training to keep up with your primary one. Now the off-season is not really a time of rest, it’s a time – about the only time – to make weaknesses strengths. The off-season is a time to get stronger and faster, a time heal a little bit, a time to improve technique, a time to create some new and better habits. In short, off-season is that time to get better all the way the around. Today, Christians begin the season of Lent, a 40 day period set aside for spiritual growth in anticipation of Easter – the glorious resurrection of our Lord. In many ways, Lent is the Christian’s “off-season”.
When we hear Lent most of us think in terms of “putting off” – fasting. This is true, and in certain traditions it is called the “Great Fast”. Most churches seek to help their members by posting some rules for fasting such as “what” and “when” to eat or not to eat. But the whole idea of fasting – “putting off” – is in order to “put on”. You don’t’ take away for taking away sake, rather you restrict or sacrifice so that you can focus more on growing in your relationship with God. Much like an Athlete’s “off-season”, you cut back in some areas so that you can focus more on building up other aspects in your game. For off-seasons to be beneficial they require discipline and sacrifice. If I want to put on some strength and lean muscle mass in the off-season I will need a disciplined structured lifting program as well as disciplined structured nutritional plan. I’m going to have to make some sacrifices of time and with what I eat in order to make gains I want. This is the same idea with Lent; the sacrifices remind us and make room for the practices that will help us grow in our relationship with God.
Lent is that time of year – the off-season – that the church sets aside in order to strengthen our weaknesses. It’s that time to go to work on our spiritual life, a time to put off pride and put on humility, a time lose greed and find generosity, a time to push away adultery and embrace purity, a time to cut out envy and become benevolent, a time to stop impulsiveness and live in moderation, a time to end anger and live in kindness, and a time not to be lazy, but to be diligent. Lent is that season to get better, a time to grow closer to God.
A few guidelines to follow:
- For everything you cut out put something spiritually positive into its place. For example, if you cut out chocolate, put in an extra time of prayer. So if you typically eat chocolate three times a day you would replace that time of eating chocolate with prayer.
- Just like you would do with workout program, design your self a spiritual workout for these 40 days. Set aside time each day that you pray and read Scripture. Also, add to this a spiritual book on some area you want to improve on in you life.
- Make an explicit effort to live differently. This could be as simple as making everything you say be words of kindness.