A Creation Friendly Lent
March 9, 2011
Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent. We have ashes imposed on our foreheads and begin a forty-six day season of renewal and repentance that leads up to Easter. Generally, as part of this season, many people choose to give up or take on certain things that lead them away from sinful or destructive habits, and into a life that is more rewarding and beneficial for others.
This year, Heather and I are aiming to have a “creation-friendly” Lent. Environmental destruction is an important concern for Christians, and lately we have both felt the need to focus on how we ourselves are contributing to that destruction through own choices and behaviors. We are hoping that, through this season of Lent, we will become more deliberate in thinking about God’s concern for the planet and acting that out in our daily decisions.
The first Lent was extremely creation-friendly. Jesus wandered around in the wilderness and ate nothing, taking not a single thing away from the earth’s resources and simply being in the nature that God created. We are not going to go that far, but we do have four areas in which we intend to practice being creation-friendly this Lent:
1) Doing an environmental justice/creation care Scripture reading plan, to learn and to meditate upon what God says about the creation
2) Spending more time connecting to nature, hiking and being in God’s creation at least once a week
3) Committing to a plan to reduce our carbon footprint and do less harm to the environment in our lifestyle choices, especially in what we eat and drink
4) Sharing our efforts with others and learning from their experiences
We’ll be sharing more as we go along. In the meantime, please feel free to share your suggestions and comments, and may the Lent season renew us all.
Steve
I gave up Facebook for Lent, which has been kinda hard for me. Being a stay-at-home mom, I am able to be on Facebook a lot. I just leave the window open on my computer and I can see anytime I have a new notification. I also have it on my phone, which I have on me most of the day. I would check my FB so many times throughout the day, it got to be really ridiculous. I realized it was distracting me from being present with my baby, I wasnt giving her my full attention. I don’t want her to think she is of 2nd importance to me or something like that. It came to be a time wasting activity, so thats why I decided to step away from it for a while.
I am also only listening to Christian music. This is something I have been wanting to do for a while, or at least make more of an effort to listen to this genre. This has been especially hard to do when I’m driving somewhere. I always listen to the radio in the car! It’s been a great experience so far, although I do miss my pop music!
How’s it been going for you guys?
Lori, thanks for the update on your Lent experience. FB is definitely a time-killer, and I appreciate your observation that it makes us less “present” to whatever we’re doing, whether that’s a baby or just other people in our lives. I’ll be posting something about how it’s going for us so far, but I think we’re finding it harder to incorporate actually doing something into our lives than it is to give something up.