What are you giving up for Lent?

The start of the year provides a great opportunity to explore our aspirations for the year ahead. “What is it that I want to create for personal well-being, relationships and my work?”

This image, which was shared as part of our spiritual retreat made me laugh out loud as it was so relevant to me. How many of my thoughts and regrets about the past and particularly concerns about the future impact my personal well-being which in turn shapes how I show up. Being ‘present’ has emerged as a focus for this year.

When we are truly present, we are not distracted or troubled by what happened in the past or all the things we need to do in the future, but we are ‘in the moment’, open to what we are seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing. When we are present, we can be more open and aware of God’s presence in and with us. This is when God does His best work, challenging our mental models of how we see ourselves, and others, showering us with unconditional love and equipping us to do the same with others, and in my case ‘calming the storm’. I have discovered that the wild storms created in my own mind can be stilled when I am present and open to God’s love and peace which ‘surpasses all understanding’.

During this time of Lent, we can focus on giving up our habitual ways of responding to situations, the regrets we have about the past and the anxieties we have about the future. Let’s give up a 24/7 focus on work. Let’s give up the addiction of believing that we must sort out the past, present, and future on our own. Make it a daily practice during Lent to be still, and just ‘be’ with God. Allow God to change our ‘over-active’ way of thinking and doing and provide space and time for God to renew our minds, equipping us to be present to and aware of God’s presence in all situations.

Romans 12:1-2 (MSG) So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. … God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Mignon Weckert

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