Greening Time

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Luke 4:1-13

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day in Lent. Popular culture will be asking you 'What are you giving up for Lent?' A Facebook post by Texas Presbyterian Foundation pretty much summarizes my thoughts on that quite well - FAST from judging others, FEAST on Christ dwelling in them. So many of us get into the 'feeling' of this season but really don't stop to think what it means.

Barbara Brown Taylor helps some - "'Lent' itself means 'spring' - the greening of the human soul, pruned with repentance, fertilized with fasting, spritzed with self-appraisal, mulched with prayer." I can't help but jump back to my theme from last week's transfiguration. Jesus shone brightly white, but the rest of us are an ordinary green. Perhaps this ordinary green is not so easy either! I take the words of another superstar - Kermit the Frog. "It's not easy being green. You blend in with so many ordinary things.

Greening of the soul - in the past I've given up Coke, red meat, chocolate. What did this really mean to me? It was a discipline and reminder, but was I really venturing into my own wilderness of temptation? That is the essence of these 40 days. To follow the example and discipline of Jesus by focusing our own efforts on a 40 day intentional practice. Forty days is what it takes to truly work at a practice or sacrifice to see differently.

I have heard many people this year giving up Facebook or a cell phone. When is something a wilderness, and when is it just a convenience of life? I suggest that the difference might be in how we use the items we are chosing to give up or take up. Instead of just going through the motions of tradition, are we working at leading a life that doesn't jump to the familiar to fill time? Are we truly interacting with people, really seeing them or just filling time in a mind-numbing blur? FEAST on Christ dwelling in others and ourselves.

The wilderness for me is a place of beauty. It is where we see the creation all around us. We get a first-hand, up close appreciation of God's miracle of life. Yet, wilderness is a place of temptation - a temptation to ignore this beauty and faith reflection. Perhaps to use phones, music, tv, Facebook etc. to fill the time instead of looking around us. Awareness of others, of creation, of how the Holy Spirit is moving in and through us. That most precious gift of our time.

How is the Holy Spirit present in our world today? In ways that we don't see without practice? In ways that a little discipline of any sort, of giving something up or embracing something may help us see more fully? God works in the green of human ordinariness, in the green of wilderness. In the metaphor of a garden: pruning, training and fertilizing us. Green is here everyday, but 40 days of focus helps us to see it through new eyes. To pay attention and see Christ in others. Even Kermit decides in the end that "Green is beautiful, and it's what I want to be." May the Holy Spirit be with you in this Lenten Season.

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