Curt Peterson
This Lent, I’ve been thinking about a seminar I attended last summer. The theme was “Does Your Character Preach?” and the focus was on how regular spiritual practices can change our lives and strengthen our relationships with Christ and with each other.
Much of what we learned and experienced was based on the teachings of the 4th Century desert fathers and the way they used spiritual practices to cultivate virtue and diminish vice in their monastic communities. The vice that I’ve been thinking about this Lent is sloth.
Sloth is not the same thing as laziness, despite what pop culture understandings of the “seven deadly sins” have taught us. Sloth is better understood as a boredom with routine and a fascination with new, novel experiences. When you are struggling to read for class, write a paper, or prepare a sermon and it seems like the perfect time to fold laundry, do the dishes, or reorganize your calendar, that could be sloth nudging at you.
As we each practice our Lenten disciplines and devotions, prepare for Holy Week, and for the rest of the semester, it is important to remember that none of us can do these things alone. We are each flawed, imperfect, sinful human beings. We each struggle with “doing what we should,” “getting distracted,” “struggling to focus,” or whatever name you might give to what those desert fathers named sloth.
But as the Psalmist and as Paul remind us in today’s verses, we are not alone. We can place our trust in Christ that we can do hard things, that we can stick with our spiritual practices. We can find Christ in those practices. We can also find Christ in each other, knowing that when we are struggling, when we can’t keep doing it (whatever it is), we are each part of the body of Christ, and we are never alone.
