Lent and Busyness
We are not quite a full week into this Lenten season—a time of cutting away things that hold us back in our Christian lives and of taking up new habits that will draw us closer to God and conform us more closely to the image of Christ. Both the negative (cutting away) and positive (taking up) aspects of Lent require us to break old habits and form new ones.
This is easier said than done, as anyone can attest who has tried to break a bad habit or create a good one. It is difficult because it requires us to make deliberate choices that go against the status quo of our lives, to disengage our cruise controls, to steer ourselves in different directions. It is difficult because it requires us to make those choices day in and day out, over and over and over until they become second nature.
The status quo is easy, but the status quo is likely not what is most beneficial for us.
Focusing on the positive aspect of forming new habits, if we set our goals realistically, we recognize that we are not making incredible demands upon ourselves. Forming a new Bible reading habit, for example, takes 15-20 minutes each day, which is nothing compared to the hours that Americans statistically spent glued to screens each day.
If we can get past the initial hurdle of laziness that is more powerful for many than we want to give credit, I think part of what discourages us is the thought that these little changes seemingly make such little difference in the grand scheme of our lives. Now, I admit that these new habits we wish to form generally demand trivial amounts of time, attention, and effort; however, I do not agree that it follows that the benefits are necessarily also trivial.
Yes, most of the choices we make are tiny and seemingly insignificant; however, it is the cumulative effect of these small choices that have the potential to create major changes in us over the course of months and years and decades. A few minutes each day cultivating a habit multiplies over the years to hundreds or thousands of hours—hours that can be spent growing in godliness or wasted on trivialities.
One of the principal parts of Lent is deliberately setting aside the small amounts of time, attention, and effort to build habits that will reap great benefits over the course of our entire lives. It is our choice to make.