Eric and Leslie’s Family Blog

Noah has finally figured out how to ride his tricycle. We got him the bike for his birthday (5 months ago). I thought he would have picked up on in right away, but guess it took a little longer than expected. Oh well…he is now an official bike rider.

our little bike rider

still going

check him out!

The past year has been interesting for me because of my diabetic diagnosis. I had to go sit through classes with nurses and nutritionist to learn about my condition and how to better deal with things for the rest of my life. The most difficult thing has been re-learning how to eat. For the longest time I seemed to feel like I was starving all the time, but after a while things got a little easier. I had created a new habit and following my diabetic diet hasn’t been difficult at all.

It’s a little like the challenge that is being a Christian. We go to church and Sunday school. We participate in the service projects and we make our pledge to the annual budget. We look back on our lives and we see the ups and downs – those places where the passion for Jesus burned – and those places where we were drowning in doubt.

As we make our way toward Easter this Lent season, many of us have made attempts to give up something as a way of sacrifice to prepare us for the mystery and miracle of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This time of year we all hear the conversations about giving up drinking Cokes or eating meat. Some people refrain from foul language or…dare I say it…spend their 40 days without visiting Facebook or Myspace….GASP!

So what’s the point of all of this ‘giving up’ stuff? I’ll tell you what it is – it’s a diet, only this time you aren’t trying to lose weight, control your cholesterol, or keep your blood sugar level down. Think of all of the different kinds of diets that are out there on the market. Maybe you’re thinking of the Atkins diet, Jenny Craig, the Fat Smash Diet (yes, there is such a thing), or Jared the Subway guy. What is it that every single one of these diets has in common?

Yes, they all do work for some people – Yes, they all fail for some people.

But the one thing about diets that most people miss, no matter what it’s approach or catchy name, is that every diet tries to achieve its goals by helping you create a new habit – one that will last you your whole life. You know what I’m talking about if you every tried a diet – lost some weight – but weren’t able to keep the weight off!

The same thing goes for Lent every year. We try to find a new, creative, catchy “Jesus Diet” that will somehow give us that burning passion for the Lord that we all crave. The only problem is that Lent only lasts 40 days, and even worse, our attention span doesn’t last near that amount of time.

This is one of the hardest things we face as Christians. We struggle with the day-to-day expressions and practices of our faith. We struggle with the how and where when it comes to being Christian. We know what to do on Sundays. We have our worship service we attend. We have our Sunday school class we attend. Some of us even have our committees or our bible study groups we attend – but still we struggle with the stuff in between Sunday mornings.

Our Jesus diets work – they really do. But do we let them create life-long habits? In my case, it was the threat of a life cut short because of my physical condition that helped motivate me to create a new habit.

God isn’t going to threaten us to motivate us to be more Christian. God did, however, give us free will – the ability to choose how to live our lives – so that when we do start that “Jesus Diet” it can become more than a quick fix. It becomes a habit that changes even the stuff between Sunday mornings.

Blessings,

Eric