Coffee and Chocolate

It is lent season.  I am a newbie at observing lent.  Yet I like it. 

I kind of observed lent two years ago trying to give up "criticism" -- honestly one of my flaws in my marriage relationship.  It was actually really good for me to do that.  Last year I gave up facebook which was shockingly easy.  I didn't really want to go on facebook after I made a point not to go on it after two weeks.  I knew I wasn't missing anything.  In fact, going back on facebook was weird.  I realized how surface level it can be and it didn't have much to draw me back in.  I had developed closer relationships with people that I saw in real life -- so it was definitely valuable.  I am on facebook again but generally limit myself to Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday in checking it.  This year I decided to give up my growing coffee addiction and chocolate.  I'll be real in saying that just last week I counted the days and couldn't believe I had so much longer to go.  Haha.

So, as of yet I ate a tiny bit of cacao (which is what chocolate is derived from) in a raw fruit dessert I made for my housemate's birthday.  I honestly didn't know cacao was chocolate until my friends pointed it out to me.  I decided to eat it anyway since it was such a different form and not one I had ever tried that I can remember.  Chocolate has been relatively easy to give up.  Definitely there are times I see something chocolate that I really want -- and I almost justified eating a chocolate mousse because it wasn't a "chocolate bar" -- most of my standard intake of chocolate is.  However, I was convicted by a friend.  Hehe.  Coffee has been a different story.  It's not so much that I crave it.  I do want it sometimes, but more so for the physical/chemical effect it gives -- the zoom.  I have been allowing myself more naps and enjoying that new rhythm.  However, I am grateful it has not been cloudy and instead gloriously sunny lately.

Even though I am doing fine in not having chocolate or coffee I wonder if I am fasting "right".  I don't want to do something legalistically or even just do it out of habit.  I want to be contemplative of why I am doing it.  The idea behind lent as far as I understand it is to sacrifice something as an act of identifying with Jesus Christ who sacrificed his place in heaven (for a time) to be with us on earth and even sacrificed himself for sin so "him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).  This is absolutely crazy beautiful.  I want to focus my energy and thoughts on this more.  I want a closer relationship with the Maker of all good things so by giving some up I can appreciate more.

If you wish, what are you doing for lent, if anything?  Why?  How's it going?

"Love Songs"

Earlier this morning I was listening to the "Feist" station on Pandora and I was surprised by how many "love songs" were playing.  I guess I typically avoid that kind of music (even though I do like Feist).  However, It is pretty difficult  to listen to pop music of any kind without hitting a "love song".  Now you many be wondering why I am putting "love song" in quotes.  I felt compelled to put it in the quotations because as I was listening to the lyrics (a very important part of the music for me) I realized just how selfish and childish sounding most of the songs were. They were not so much about love that endures, a love that is faithful like the one described in 1 Corinthians 13, but about a feeling, even sometimes it seemed, just hormonal compulsion, and maybe at it's grandest, a reflection on life.

Now, to many people, maybe this is what "love" is...I don't know.  Yeah, it probably is.  :o( How disappointing and trite if that's what "love" relationships end up being.

I am grateful that Jesus calls me to a much greater love than that.  I am grateful for the imperfection and yet commitment I experience through Chris and my marriage.  We have our struggles but our marriage (our love) is based on something and Someone who created the Heavens and Earth and sustains them by His being.  Our "love" (blast that word, it's been so abused!) is something that expands with us.  It is not in a dream, it is not in a vaccuum.  It is shaped and forged and strengthened and even spilled out in and on a community of friends and family.  

I am going to put all of 1 Corinthians 13 on here and I want to note that I know this isn't about a marriage or love relationship -- but it's explanation of love is the one all kinds of love need -- friendship, family, marriage, community, etc.  How much greater and deeper and richer is that love of Jesus (and how much greater and deeper and richer does it make our lives).

1 Corinthians 13
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice with unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge , it will be done away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; bu the greatest of these is love."