Living Intentionally
Note: A long introduction to this post.
I’m approaching Lent with a different attitude this year. Instead of focusing on giving up something simply for the sake of giving something up, I sat down to see what I wanted to add to my life. More particularly, what can I add to my life that enhances and expresses my living relationship with the Presence of God.
I’ve from time to time found great value in daily journaling, but haven’t touched my journal for 7-8 months. So that is part of what I am taking on. I also have found that the two times a day Centering Prayer is foundational to so much of who I believe God is calling me to be. So that is the package. Over the 40 days of Lent it is my intent to develop those three pieces of my spiritual practice to the point where they are my basic core.
Now, to the flip side. In order to be successful in that intent, I do have to decide what in my life can be set aside to make room. The image I’ve been working on is the image of our lives being a bucket (or a water tank as a member of the church shared). Our buckets are already full of things we do. So, for me to be successful in making those practices a core in my life, something has to be taken out of my bucket.
As I thought about that, I have realized for a long time that aimless television viewing is a major time and energy sink for me. Notice, I didn’t say television itself, but aimless television viewing. This is sitting down, grabbing the remote and spending hours just flipping around watching for a few moments whatever catches my attention. Big problem. So, that is the giving up part of this formula.
If I have a show I want to watch, fine, I will watch it, but then I want to turn the television off when it is done. The other night, I sat with my wife and watched a couple hours of television. That’s fine, too. We were sharing some time together, we would watch, we would talk. Yet, I have to confess, when she left, I slipped right back into the aimless viewing that I was wanting to stay away from.
Now to the point of this post!
I realized as I was processing that event in my journal, that the larger attitude I am trying to give up is living without intention. To do something without aim, purpose, or intention leads to that larger experience of wasting the precious moments that God gives us. This is living without choice.
The gift of life is something wonderful and I want to waste less and less of it as time goes on. So whether it is watching television or surfing the web or pastoring a church or anything else in my life. I am realizing that to live it best is to live with intention. And that intention is to express in everything I do the living Essence of God within me.
