40 Days of Nothing
February 09, 2007
From the Truth and Grace Ventures Blog
When Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, February 21, the Servants Quarters community will embark on 40 Days of Nothing. As described in the Book of Common Prayer,
The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. [Likewise, we are invited] in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
The Litany of Penitence for Ash Wednesday calls on us to confess, among other things,
the pride, hypocrisy and impatience of our lives, [o]ur self-indulgent appetites and ways, . . . our exploitation of other people, . . . our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves, [o]ur intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, . . . our blindness to human need and suffering, . . . our indifference to injustice and cruelty, . . . our waste and pollution of [God’s] creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us . . . .
Having confessed, we turn to the Lord, praying that He would restore us and accomplish in us the work of His salvation so that we may reflect His glory in the world. This is why we will undertake 40 Days of Nothing, so that we may honor our Lord by deliberately and systematically identifying and removing obstacles that impede our relationship with Him.
