Ash Wednesday has come and gone. What now?
Daniel 9:3 says,
“Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” (English Standard Version)
And in other translations properly translating this passage by saying, attention, instead of the face. I turned my attention to the Lord God.
Today and the first week of Lent I feel it is important to focus on attentiveness. In particular, where and with who is our attention on?
Lent is a special time of year to shift our focus and practice the time-honored Christian and Jewish faith practice of reorienting our hearts and minds to Christ through fasting and prayer. Let us not waste this opportunity to do just this during Lent 2021. To take our attention off of things like Facebook, Youtube, Netflix, etc, and to reorient that attention on Christ by diving into His Word, seeking Him more in prayer, and being intentional to pay attention to how God is moving in and around us.
This teaches and shows us there is a great significance in being attentive to God if we truly desire to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. The ultimate question for us is are we being attentive? How can we be more attentive? How can we remove the things that compete for our attention from the One we should be attentive to?
As I challenged before in my previous blog post on the subject matter of Lent. May we be a people who seek in every day in every way to reorient our attention to Christ. Lent is a great opportunity to do just this.
What are you doing to reorient your attention today? How will you continue to reorient your attention throughout Lent and beyond?