It’s only forty days long … a simple forty days … just as long as Jesus was alone in the desert … but in these forty days, a simple gesture of giving one’s self up in an thought-provoking way to honor a Glorious King …
“What would you like to give up to for God?” we ask the girls as we gather round the Bible, fevered baby resting in my arms and a squiggly toddler restless in her father’s lap. Outside the snow is falling and covering the ground again in a fresh white, sparkling blanket.
Inside our home, we are searching our hearts.
We think.
We pray.
We read the verses in the Lent devotion.
We light the seven candles.
We extinguish one.
A few hours later, one of my daughters is nibbling on a bright orange, sucking the juice, a fresh bit of Heaven in the middle of a cold, bitter winter day.
“I’m going to stop complaining,” she says, licking the orange juice off her lips. “For Lent.”
Caught off guard, I stopped to look at her – hours had passed since our devotions and we hadn’t yet determined as a family what would be the right thing to give up to God for Lent. I really wasn’t even sure if the children had grasped the entire concept.
“I mean, before my chores or if you ask me to do something …. I’ll try not to complain …” Her childlike innocence and willingness stopped me in my tracks. Amazing.
I had been thinking of the same thing – to give up my human fault of complaining … after all, what gives us the right to think we can complain when things do not go our way? If we are unhappy that the Mortician has to work late and miss supper with the family … or whether something goes wrong at work and causes the whole day to go sour? What gives us the audacity, as humans, to think we truly are so poorly treated to complain? Have we been blinded to see the opportunities to be thankful in that very same situation?
In reading so many pioneer-time books for school, I am constantly amazed at how hard they had to work and toil and yet how little the characters grumble.
“A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
Proverbs 17:22
And so together for the next 34 days, we’re working together to stop grumbling, to avoid complaining …
to put on a happy face …
and to give our hearts some good medicine.