GOSPEL MESSAGE & RECORDING
The Eagles Training Camp begins in August, followed by the preseason and then, what the NFL calls, the "regular season." These distinctions are made because each area of football has a meaning and purpose. The training camp's focus is to identify critical plays and acclimate the players and the coaching staff to the rigor and toughness necessary for the regular season play. Although the points and scores begin to count in the regular season, the regular season has a high probability of failure without a proper training camp and preseason. Even though we are speaking of football, much of what I said relates to our Great Lent experience, which we just completed last week.
Great Lent is often viewed and experienced as the "regular season" of our Church calendar. In other words, the training camp and preseason are the days after Easter, right up until the Sunday of All Departed Souls. It is the other way around. The Great Lent is the training camp and preseason for the rest of the calendar year, the regular season. If we correctly observe Lent, then we are more prepared spiritually, mentally, and physically to handle the challenges of life from Easter to the start of Great Lent. Do we wonder why our spiritual life is not making progress or not working out in our prayer life? Well, just maybe, we have to make sure that our Lent is observed more appropriately, better than we have been doing in the past.
If we do, here are the benefits:
Physically speaking, we have to detox our bodies. Skipping meals helps with fighting diseases and illnesses. Presently, intermittent fasting is the big thing. Everyone is trying to do it. But the church has always been teaching how to skip breakfast, lunch, and or dinner to improve health.
Mentally speaking, we can train our minds to be able to fight its unholy desires, but it takes a season of fasting and preparing to do that. Mindfulness is the big thing these days. I even do a class on mindfulness for the 5th grade. But our church teaches us to be mindful of ourselves and who we are in Christ Jesus by way of its prayers and rituals. The more you do them, the more aware you become.
Spiritually speaking, the Lenten prayer and Holy Week's rigor, although it is long and arduous, helps us deal with the services present now in the "easier" seasons of the church calendar. Plus, those prayers develop in us a stronger relationship with God, which carries over into the following months. It's like a battery that gets charged during Lent and then gets used up for the rest of the months. By the time it is time for Lent again, the battery has to be recharged.