Now is the season of Lent

Now is the season of Lent. Depending on your religious denomination and particular church, Lent can be observed ritually, automatically, religiously (literally!), casually, or not at all.

I didn't grow up in a Lenten-observant church. It was talked about casually, and the Holy Week itself was absolutely vital to us... Australia doesn't have the bee in its bonnet about seperation of church and state that the US does. They're not afraid to have a 'Christian' event as a national holiday, so we were free to fully and solemnly observe Good Friday every year. More about that closer to the day. That's still six weeks away. The point is, that I grew up celebrating Easter for a period of one week, from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday. Some people in the church 'did' Lent, but it wasn't expected. 

The little church we went to when we moved to the US shocked me. While our pastor believed in periodic periods of fasting and prayer, he didn't tie them into the official church calender. He fasted in January, or when he felt called to it later in the year, and encouraged the rest of the church to join him, but it was nothing to do with any particular 'season'. The Easter season itself lasted one single day. It began and ended on Easter Sunday, and even then it seemed to be almost irrelevant to them. I wondered whether ALL American churches were that unobservant. After a couple of years, I discovered the local Methodist church and I was able to go back to my lifelong practice of going to church at lunchtime on Good Friday and spending the afternoon in solemn prayer and reflection. Church members were encouraged to observe Lent, but it really wasn't something I was comfortable with or understood, so I let it go.

Our current church is the most observant I've been to. Last year was our first Lent with them, and the first time I felt drawn to try to give something up for Lent. I surrendered my recent obsession with Facebook games and made it a whole four weeks before my life got too stressed and I retreated back to the games to survive. This year I haven't felt called to give anything up for Lent. I'm not physically able to fast, I don't care about television enough for giving it up to be a sacrifice, and I'm too busy working for the church to really have time for anything else give-up-able. Okay, I COULD give up icecream or chocolate, but I know I wouldn't make it more than a week. Seriously, instead of subtracting from my life, this year I've been feeling the pull to add to it instead. All week I've been feeling like I need to be physically on my knees before God. Is that because it's Lent? Because I'm so much more involved in church leadership, and have so much emotionally invested in our church, and I'm passionate about trying to make it the best possible place for us all? Or just because God is calling me? It doesn't matter. I need to listen to Him and to do what I'm told. And right now I'm told to pray...