After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.” And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe. – Acts 14:21-23 (NRSVUE)
The work on the water main on Chester Ave. is still going on in front of the St. Matthew building. It started at the beginning of Lent and continues. While working, they close one lane down on Chester Ave., which makes it challenging to get to the church parking lot. Even longtime members get a bit confused being sent in roundabout detours to get to the entrance. While necessary work and hardly a full-on hardship, it remains awkward for those in and out of the building during the week.
On Ash Wednesday I commented on this work in the road, talking about it as inconvenient but occasionally necessary work, much like the spiritual work of Lenten discipline is inconvenient but necessary to do regularly to flush out the built up spiritual gunk that accumulates. Now several weeks on and nearing the end of Lent, this continued work begins all the more to feel tiresome. It is more drudgery than novelty; it becomes harder to recognize anything but the tedium of the work.
Yet here too this is a reminder of Lent. Much of the point of taking on a spiritual discipline for Lent is the way it gets harder to maintain. Lent is 40 days, biblically a symbol of being long enough that you lose count of just how long it has been. Lent is designed to be long enough to move past any initial burst of enthusiasm to get to the point where it moves to drudgery and toil to maintain whatever it is that you took on or gave up for the season. It is these last weeks where it switches from an act of willpower to do something. This is when we must actually begin to be changed by our practice in order to maintain it. Our Lenten practices start to become part of who we are as we move to the end of the season. This is when these practices stop being about us and what we have decided to do, and instead the practices themselves begin to shape who we are. This is the key part of cleaning out all of that accumulated spiritual gunk. So keep it up. This is the part you’ve been moving towards all along. Yes, Easter is coming soon and you can let go of whatever discipline you chose, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the ways that these disciplines form us in following the risen Christ.Check back next week for a devotion.