Lent

My Dad's side of the family is Catholic, so I grew up observing Lent. Each year my Dad would encourage my brother and I to give up something for Lent. I think that I gave up Skittles every year of Elementary School. We would even follow the rule that you cannot eat meat on Fridays, which meant that we usually ate cheese pizza instead of pepperoni. As I progressed through middle and high school, I became less consistent in my observance of Lent.

In college I remember observing it twice. One year I decided that I would give up pop. This is definitely a difficult challenge for someone who likes to drink Dr. Pepper on a daily basis. As that season of Lent progressed, I became less and less consistent in being faithful. After a week or so I decided that I would only drink Sprite because it was caffeine free. A couple weeks after that I began to drink diet soda. To be honest I do not remember if I was able to wait until Easter to drink a Dr. Pepper. The second time I remember giving up something for lent was when Megan and I decided to give up something together. In that particular year, we decided that we should give up kissing for Lent. While we had high ambitions, we struggled to hold up to the challenge. Let's just say Good Friday had a different meaning for us that year.

Even though I am no longer Catholic, I find myself feeling as though I should give something up every year. After spending time thinking about what I should give up this year, I decided to give up Facebook. My hope in doing this is that it will give me time to do other things. I think Facebook is a great tool, but often I find myself wasting a lot of time on it. So while it is probably a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, I hope that over the next 40 days I can invest more in God as well as relationships with others. I think that is what Lent is about. It's not just giving something up for the sake of doing it. It's about letting God come in and work in your life. It's about transformation and awareness.

I really want this Lent to be different. I want it to have meaning. I think that the reason that so many people feel disconnected from God is because we as a society are not very faithful in practicing spiritual disciplines. I want Easter this year to have greater significance than it has in the past. I hope that in this season we can all receive with great joy the power of the resurrection.

The Pomegranate Phone

A large number of my middle school students have an iphone. The other day I was thinking about if they become accustomed to that type of technology at this age, they will never be able to settle for anything less. Apple has successfuly created in 12 year olds the need to have a phone with an expensive data plan for the rest of their lives. Brilliant marketing.

The other crazy thing to think about is that at some point the iphone will seem uncool and outdated. As amazing as the iphone technology is, at some point it will no longer seem like a big deal. Check out the following link for the cool new phone. Could this be the future of cell phones? What's next?

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/