Weekly Devotion: March 6, 2025

Are you giving up something for Lent? Maybe you’ve given up, giving up something for Lent…just like the New Year’s resolutions this year. New disciplines are never very easy.

As you may remember, Lent is the historic 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that began last night on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a period of preparation for us to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on Easter morning. During Lent, we try new practices like seeking the Lord in prayer by reading scripture. We serve by giving alms or offerings for those in need. We may even practice self-control through fasting – always a challenge.

Fasting is never very easy, especially when our bodies are used to certain diet or habit. Abstaining from coffee, sugar, chocolate, meat, alcohol, smoking/vaping or anything else is really hard. The odds are against us. It’s amazing the past spiritual giants of our faith like Moses, Jesus and even John Wesley could do it!

When I asked the question about giving up something for Lent around our table dinner table last night, the answers were predictably disappointing. I’m giving up homework. I’m giving up not sleeping.

While I was researching fasting in the Bible, I came across a well-known story. In Exodus 34:28, “Moses was with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” (Exodus 34:28) These 10 commandments eventually became the source for the seven moral virtues in the Christian faith: generosity, kindness, patience, temperance, prudence, chastity, and diligence. These virtues became the foundation for us to make good choices in life.

As I’m thinking about it, all of us could be more generous, kind, patient, temperate, prudent, chaste, and more diligent. Maybe cultivating these practices will help us. I’ll be praying for spiritual growth as I let these ancient disciplines grow more in my life. I’ll pray about them, thinking of these virtues as seven mileposts along the journey to Easter.

So don’t give up on giving up something for Lent. Our spiritual heroes have done it and received great inspiration. I think the same could grow in us these 40 days. Who knows maybe it’ll extend even past the 40 days into a new life discipline.

Peace,
zack@madisonfumc.com