Darren Justus

I have this really cool book I got for graduation called The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Lent is traditionally a time of 40 days before Easter spent fasting. When I started giving something up for Lent a few years ago, it was in the spirit of fasting from something particular, soda, caffeine, swearing. Soda was originally suggested by Darren (I think) for our entire Bible Study to give up because we drank quite a bit of Dr Pepper and it was going to be a hard thing to give up. Every year I try to thing of something that I can fast from that would be meaningful.

I felt that giving up soda this year would be too easy and I wanted to find something that would be more of a challenge. I thought about blogging, instant messaging, and reading my news feeds. They would be hard to give up, but they are also critical to what I do and giving them up would be more akin to not journaling, not talking with my friends (i.e. giving them the silent treatment), and not reading the newspaper. I don’t play that many video games, so giving that up wouldn’t be a challenge at all and I’m really not that into Facebook (I might check it every three days or so).

I started to think about other things I could do. Perhaps instead of giving something up, I could do something instead. And so for Lent, I am going to go to church every single Sunday. It’s something that I’ve been trying to do ever since I moved to Golden and I just really slacked on it. It will be hard, but I can do it.