Preparing for Lent

Daughter # 4 spent the afternoon preparing for Lent.

In our house the father does not really encourage fasting for Lent (per Colossians 2) but we still want to join with Christians throughout the ages and across ethic and denominational boundaries in celebrating this church season.

So I’ve been contemplating what I should do this year…

In January when I first started reading Ann Voskamp’s “One Thousand Gifts” I thought of writing my own list, and the idea came back to me recently through a hymn.

I had a Black Sunday a few weeks back. It seemed like it had been snowing forever, there was “no one” in church and I’d been thinking about my life - what it hasn’t been and where it hasn’t gone.

In the afternoon as I started choosing music for the evening English Service in Hirosaki I noticed that George Beverly Shea had just celebrated his 103rd birthday and so I you-tubed a little. “I’d Rather Have Jesus”, “All Things in Jesus”… I felt a little better.

But the what really touched me was this phrase from the song my husband chose to sing after I shared my feelings with him before prayer meeting later that week:  “Perish every fond ambition… yet how rich is my condition!”

I talked about this in my very last class presentation for Chinese class at the end of the semester. I don’t think my teacher got what I was saying at all and I wasn’t sure if it was the concept or my pronunciation that was at fault. He said I should talk about my life. But this IS my life! And I want to think/talk about it some more.

During Lent I think I’d like to focus less on the ambitions that have perished and more on that phrase “yet how rich is my condition.”