Lull

I turned in a stats assignment today, and I'm waiting for my project director to get back to me about the latest round of edits, which means I am unfettered by schoolwork for the time being.  I have a house to clean and laundry to fold and bills to pay and Easter baskets to fill and a leg of lamb to roast, but I am also reflecting on Lent here as it winds down.

From this morning's Office of Readings: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.  I shook my head as I read that, thinking about my own weaknesses.  I would be awesome at Lent if it lasted three or four weeks.  I would be a Lenten superstar.  (Yeah, yeah, I see the irony in talking about superstarness when I am supposed to be growing in humility here.)  This year I planned to give up sugar, weekday blog-reading, and weekday coffee.  It went fine for the first three weeks or so, and then I got tired of Lent.

And do you know what's really embarrassing?  In January, I had decided to give up sugar for a month because of this annoying post-fourth-baby-and-turning-35 five pounds that keeps sneaking back onto my behind when I'm not looking.  (Because I am too busy looking into the bottom of the bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips instead, puzzled that I seem to have eaten them all again.)  Why can I give up sugar for vanity's sake but not for Lent?

I have been thinking that Lent is like life, in miniature:  you have to think about the long haul.  If you burn yourself out early and then throw up your hands in disgust at the difficulty of the Christian life, what have you gained?  Next year I am going to choose one thing to give up for Lent and stick with it.

There's a tension in talking about Christian discipline:  on the one hand, there's St. Paul urging us to run the race as if to win, reminding us that he punishes his body instead of giving in to its whims.  On the other, there's the psalmist who reminds us that God knows we are dust and has compassion on us.  I think our tendency in 21st-century America is more to excuse our dustfulness (what, you got a problem with me making up two words in one post?) than to punish our bodies.  But sloth, at one end of the spectrum, is every bit as deadly as pride (or perfectionism, or scrupulosity, or whatever name you give to the alternative), at the other.

Maybe, then, that's why we have that particular reading on Holy Thursday -- it captures the tension perfectly.  It reminds us that Jesus was tempted just as we are tempted but stood firm.  And it reminds us, too: let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.