Lent Day One: Vivid Virtue

Lent Day 1:  Michala and I spent some time thinking and praying about what this season would look like.  We both felt that instead of simply giving up some item that we would try to live differently, and hopefully sacrificially.  We would not only try to cease destructive patterns in our lives but also replace them with beautiful and holy practices.  


For so many of us, holiness may seem rather bland.  We may sum up holiness as "If it feels too good, tastes too good, or you do it too long, stop!"  This is an oppressive definition but one that many of us hold to.  However, this past summer, I was struck by something I read in a devotional (A Faith and Culture Devotional).  G.K. Chesterton wrote an essay called "Piece of Chalk," in which he describes a cherished childhood pastime of playing with chalk.  He details his preferences in brown paper and in color of chalk.  He loved most his collection of white chalk.  He writes, "One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing; as fierce as red, as definite as black."


I found this intriguing, for I like so many of us had never thought of white as a color, just a 'mere absence of color.'  Chesterton compares this misinterpretation to our understanding of virtue.  He writes, "The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color.  Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell."


This realization hit home with me.  For long I would deal with my negative problems of pride and selfishness, instead of pursuing the positive virtues of humility and love.  While the distinction may seem small, it is huge in practice.  If we seek to rid ourselves of unhelpful, even evil practices we must replace them with helpful and virtuous ones.  Jesus put it this way: "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first."  


In other words, we must not merely seek to abstain from evil but to adhere to the fruit of the Spirit: to love, to joy, to peace, to patience, to kindness, to goodness, to faithfulness, to gentleness and to self-control.


With this notion of holiness in mind, we sought to both fast and feast each week of Lent, to abstain from evil and to do good.  This week's theme is "live simply, so others may simply live."  We are trying to give up superfluous spending so that we may increase our sacrificial giving. 


I believe this direction holds much promise and we feel much more excited about Lent due to this refined understanding of holiness.  We believe that sacrificial living is just that: both sacrificial and also truly alive.


May God bless you this Lent season as you seek to be as alive as He!


PS: For funky-fun song about simple living click here to listen Keller Williams' "Keep It Simple," a favorite of mine.