Tested

Last week I shared my experience at baking bread. Well after some initial success, I tried to make pizza dough and when I got home after church, the bread didn’t rise. Sometimes you just have to throw out the batch and start over again from scratch. I made another batch and twicked the recipe by adding beer instead of water to the yeast. To my surprise and delight, this recipe worked and the pizza dough rose. However, on my third attempt at bread baking my dough did not rise and it was a brick.

Jesus was tempted in the desert and maybe we have become a little nonchalant and not that he passed the test, but what about our effort for Lent. I shared a story on Sunday about a college senior who not necessarily opposed to hard work, she was only doing what she had to do to graduate.
She had taken as easy elective, but the professor had given her a “B” on her first assignment along with the request for a conversation after class.

The professor said, "Janet, this is A work. However, I am giving you a B because you can do better." Today a student in a similar situation would likely file a complaint. However, this professor told her student she had gotten lazy, that she had been coasting for a while now, that she had quit reaching. Then she told her that if she had any aspirations for graduate school whatsoever, she was going to have to step it up a notch.

Maybe it’s time for us to step it up a notch for Lent. Perhaps Jesus' forty days were meant to 'test him' to get him ready for what would follow. It was a time of honing, sharpening, and perfecting in much the same way our college senior was being tested. For it was not really about the grade she would receive after twelve weeks of reading and analyzing and learning and writing. It was about learning skills she could later put to use. Yes, in this case it was about developing 'character' and learning to work hard and to deepen her drive towards goal and love of learning --- all attributes that she would need throughout my life.

Lent comes to us as a time set apart to help us become more and more who God intends. What this means for each of us may well be different:

• For some we may continue in the ancient practice of giving something up as a way of somehow identifying with Christ's sacrifice in our behalf. 
• For others it may be a time of adding something: as in spending more time in worship and prayer. Or in experimenting with another kind of prayer which is less familiar to us.

As I place ashes on one forehead, the lady promised Jesus that she would write a letter to someone in prison, another shared that they would start reading the bible daily. How will you allow the spirit to transform you this Lent?

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that they will take it up a notch and spend their forty days inspired to be more grateful, generous, compassionate and forgiving. To get your mind off the minus 22 below zero this morning, let me share an image that will help you relax and be a cure for the winter blues.