do justice

lenten season February 24, 2010

by Kristi Pratt

For this year’s Lent, I decided to go deeper than my challenge to limit my consuming and learn about what it means to live more simply with the use of my time. I realize as I say this that it sounds very egocentric to begin with; MY use of MY time. But I know that that is how I often think of my life, as my time and my decision of what to do with it. But I also know that this is not how it should be. My time on this earth is not my own but rather a gift from God.

So how do I use my time? I know that there are a lot of meaningful ways I could spend my time, but instead I am often on Facebook or finding some random distraction like reorganizing my craft box beneath my bed. It is amazing how distractions can become a time machine that somehow transports you from 8pm to 11pm without realizing how much time has passed by. That is exactly what I find myself doing a lot: distractions. And it isn’t even the typical distractions (like Facebook, or reorganizing). It is those good commitments I have made, yet they still distract me from what God is really calling me to do.

I have struggled with this paradox a lot, and it used to be such a big concern that I would have anxiety about whether what I was doing was a “good thing” or a “God thing.” This worry turned out to be a counter-productive because I would be so focused on whether I was doing the right thing that I couldn’t even have the right intentions about doing it. I’ve found that I need to simplify and return to God’s commandment to love God and love others. This commandment has simplified my complicated attempt to figure out the “good things” versus the “God things.”

So, this Lent season, I am going to try to simplify my schedule. First of all, I need to write out the time that I am spending on activities in my regular, un-challenged life. Next, I want to go through and simplify that time, replacing the time that I spend on trivial activities with more meaningful activities. Here are some actions that I am going to try to carry out this Lenten season that I think will help me work towards a more simple life:

• I have decided to only be on Facebook once a week this Lenten season
• I want to create a space for two Sabbath hours each week
• I will use this Sabbath time for prayer, reading my Bible and reading Richard Fosters’s Freedom of Simplicity
• In order to do all these things, I need to not procrastinate and to schedule my time, sticking to that schedule.

This is what I am doing for Lent—becoming a non-procrastinator, a schedule-purifier of distractions, a Sabbath-taker and a reader from God and Foster. I hope that I’m not just filling up my time this Lent with good things, but truly do hope they are God things that will being me into a better understanding of what it means to be a simple follower of Christ.