Lenttt

So I'm an avid blog reader in my spare time, and I recently came upon this blog called 'Conversion Diary', written by a woman who converted from an atheist to a Christian a few years ago.  I really liked what she had to say about Lent, so I'm sharing it with you!  Check out her blog for more interesting posts!

Conversion Diary

Christians used to ask in wonder about my life as an atheist, “Don’t you feel like there’s something missing?” To which I would respond by rolling my eyes. In my worldview, the only things humans could possibly need or want were the goals that our species had evolved to need and want, and as long as I had those things or felt certain that I could attain them (which I did), nothing could be missing from my life. I continued to pursue happiness from the possibilities given to me by the material world alone. At some point I came to the realization that the best the world has to offer was probably never going to be good enough; that achieving my wildest dreams , even my own personal version of a Super Bowl win, would make me happy to a certain extent…but not fully. It was a bitter realization.

This is why I love Lent.

For me, Lent is a reminder that what I once thought was the worst news in the world — that there is nothing in the material universe that was going to bring me the deep happiness I craved — is actually the best news in the world. To give up worldly pleasures during Lent, things that I once built my life around pursuing, is to put them in their proper place; to disentangle my hopes and dreams from things and fleeting accomplishments; to set my sights much higher.

Lent reminds me to have a healthy amount of awe for one of the greatest mysteries ever seen: that the human animal, who should know of nothing other than the material world at hand, has from the beginning held on to this perplexing notion that what he needs and wants cannot be found in the only world he’s ever seen. Almost every culture throughout history, separated by time and space, has come up with this idea. I always wrote that off when I was an atheist, assuming that people just needed stories about fantasy worlds to make themselves feel better. But now that I have discovered God’s existence, I get it. This idea won’t die because the thirst we feel deep in our souls is real, and the material world offers us only saltwater to quench it. Looking outside the material world, finding God, is to finally find the pure water that fully satisfies the aching thirst.

Lent reminds me not that all the status and comforts and possessions I’ve pursued are necessarily bad, but that there is Something infinitely better. To quote C.S. Lewis: “All that we call human history — money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery — [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

I wish you all a blessed and fruitful Lent.

Peace, love & prayers-

K