New Year’s Resolutions and Lent

Sometimes they feel an awful lot alike, don’t they?

Except one sounds much more spiritual than the other.

If Lent is all about self improvement and self discipline, it’s really about having another go at bettering myself. Not much different than New Year’s Resolutions, really.

Or maybe it’s about suffering. Do I understand Jesus’ suffering more when I do Lent? How can I compare fasting from net surfing to the suffering He experienced? I can’t.

I was mentioning to a few church ladies the other day that I was having a hard time cutting out sugar (for health reasons). This wasn’t even about Lent, because I wasn’t going sugar-free for Lent this year. One of them  piped up excitedly, “It’s been so easy for me to cut out sugar! No problem! I just say no to it!”. I was happy for her. I guess that’s not really suffering, then, though. 

So, it seems that if the thing we choose to fast from is easy peasy, then Lent is not even about suffering at all.

What I am learning from Lent is what I’ve said before. It brings me face to face with my weaknesses.   Oh me of little discipline. God help me if I can’t even abstain from whatever-it-is-I-have-to-get-a-grip-on for 40 days. Or add on that practice-that’s-good-for-me consistently. It’s frustrating!

I read recently that Lent can be thought of as “Spring Cleaning for the soul”. Maybe that’s true.  But maybe it’s God who holds the cleaning cloth.