The midway point of Lent’s 40 days is a perfect opportunity to stop, reflect, and consider a course correct. By now, some have fallen off the Lent-wagon, some aren’t feeling the effect of their practice, and others have taken to outright lying about their level of Lent participation.
It’s not difficult to understand why.
Many of us reach mid-Lent in desperate need of a reset
An essay shared by Len Sweet—The Rising Tide of Educated Aliteracy: In the age of information overload, discussing books you haven’t read has become a badge of honor—got me to thinking about the pressure we church-folk often feel to seem as though we are benefiting from participation in a spiritual practice, when we really aren’t.
What do you do when you get to the middle of Lent and realize you’ve veered off course? Perhaps you gave up the wrong thing. Or maybe you started strong but fell off the wagon and never got back on again. Or perhaps you never made a commitment for Lent but feel a bit of guilt over it now.
The middle of Lent is a perfect time to assess and course correct.
If Lent is more about the habit than the holy, then you're doing it wrong! Click To TweetAll too often, our participation in Lent becomes superficial over the stretch of 40 days. If we have reached the midway point of Lent and are feeling that we’ve made a mistake, then NOW is the time to make a change.
Maybe God is leading you to give something else up for Lent, something of far greater sacrifice. Perhaps gave up something and then lost your resolve after a week; pick yourself up and start again. Or maybe God is leading you to take something on for the rest of Lent rather than giving something up, such as deeper prayer. For some of us, the issue is that we never made a change in our spiritual practices and now it is time to make a Lenten commitment to Christ.
I hereby give you permission to make a mid-Lent change in your 40-day spiritual practice.
Don’t spend the remainder of your journey to Holy Week in a less-than-spiritual situation. Make small Spirit-directed changes now and see what happens between now and Resurrection.
PRACTICE: Assess your current spiritual practices; course-correct as necessary. If helpful, discuss with a trusted spiritual advisor.