Entering the Time of Reflection

I didn't grow up with much religious training.  The whole Lenten Season always seemed like a strange religious ritual to me growing up.  It seemed a strange discipline to give up something as so many of my school chums were doing.  I personally never did it successfully, probably because I never understood it.  That has changed.

Whatever your religious beliefs or non-beliefs, this (Lent) can be a time of introspection and examination of the choices we make.  The purpose of the tradition of giving a self-indulgence during the lenten period between Ash Wednesday (today) and Easter (this year on March 31) is to cause one to stop and reflect on the choices one makes every day.  The hope is that we will become more fully conscious of our every day decisions and their effects on ourselves and the world around us.

Every choice you make is like a ripple in the pond eventually reaching distant shores.  

From Isaiah 58 "Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?"   

---