The One About Celebrating Lent...and, some thoughts from Israel

Two events occurred yesterday.

1) I arrived back in the US after a full-big-day-after-big-day trip to Israel (which explains why I was awake at 1:30 AM beginning this blog)...and,

2) Wednesday marked the official start of the Lenten season, which leads up to Resurrection Sunday.

Yes, I celebrate Lent.

Yes, I am Protestant...

I find focusing on the 40-days leading up to the biggest event in our Christian heritage creates in me a readiness for celebrating Easter in Spirit and Truth.

I'm not bound to the traditions of "giving up" for Lent; instead, it has become more about "adding to."

I add to my days a "one-thing" that deepens my awareness, and AWE, in what my Savior gave as He loved this world so well. 

I reckon in the end, it amounts to re-prioritizing my time, and in a sense, sacrificing more of it to be intentionally proactive in my "adding-to" (if that makes sense).

I do that which will prepare my heart in greater-extent for the commemoration of the day my Jesus overcame death!

This year, I intend to take more time to read and re-read the gospels, bringing them to life in my mind, by envisioning the land of Jesus-birth that I was just privileged to visit.

One of the gals on our tour said it well when she stated, "Now, when I read Scripture it will be as if I've gone from viewing it through the lens of a small black and white television to HD."

In one of the many conversations I had with our tour-guide, he dropped this one little thought:

"Really, one of the biggest hindrances to the Jews of Israel receiving Christ as their Messiah is Christians."

He went on to explain how knowledgable these men and women are of their text...

...How faithfully they study the Torah (their History, comprised of the first five books of the Bible), the Nevi'im (the Prophets), the Ketuvim (the Writings). They KNOW the TaNaKh (the Hebrew Bible)...and study through it, all of them on the same schedule, year after year.

One of his friends at Hebrew University simply shook his head at Christians.

How little we know and comprehend our Text.

And, in randomness, a thought was dropped into the thin-air of space in my heart.

I took it as a challenge...

...and, I've taken it as a Lenten-focus.

This friend of our tour guide had mentioned that if Christians were truly convinced Jesus was the Messiah, the Savior come-from-God, we'd at least read through the gospels on a weekly basis...

We'd want to study and copy the life of our Rabbi-Messiah as best we could...frontwards, backwards, inside out, and upside down.

There-in is my Lenten goal: to read through all four gospels every week over the next six.

Not just to read it and check the "done-box;" but to read it and savor it, ponder it, let it roll around in my head and on the tip of my tongue.

Not because of bondage to a have-to-do...

So, why?

To know my Savior better.

To envision His life on this earth.

To walk through the Words of His followers with a careful eye on the path that Jesus walked.

To travel so closely behind Him, I am covered in His dust.

To sit beside Him in the Garden and pray, "Thy will be done."

To attend His trial.

To stand at His feet as the blood drips from the cross.

To lay Him carefully in the tomb.

To feel the full impact of Resurrection power...

And celebrate what that means for me!

This Lenten Season, I want to once again, comprehend the force of the Unseen Hand that changed my life in that one moment of history.

XXXXX

This was how our trip began.

Each of us were handed a honey-stick.

The directions were simple: open it, put a drop of honey on the tongue, savor its sweetness, and remember:

Try it.

Experience it.

Then, consider how you can enjoy the sweetness of Christ and His Words of Life all the way to Easter.

Oh, that I truly KNOW Him more!

Not just in partial color...

...But, in full HD!

Oh, that we all would...and in response, show others just how SWEET HE IS!