Daily Dose - Easter Sunday

Happy Easter,

The following is a dialogue that I have had with myself for most of my life:

I deserve today!  So to celebrate I will do the following:  I will gather with family.  Loads of sugar will be consumed.We will have great food.  Lots of wine will be drank.  I will have gone to a very pretty Mass.  By the time I hit the bed tonight; I will have lived a full and robust day!

Question: I deserve today??  Answer:  Well yes I do.  After all I have fasted, gave things up and worked hard for this day.  Forty days of work to be exact!

Question:  Can you tell me more about today being rewarded for forty days of work?  Answer:  Yes,  ever since I have been a kid it has been the same.  Lent is about thinking about and doing church stuff and then we have a big old party on Easter. Mom starts planning weeks in advance.  She finds all the right cloths to wear to church.  She coordinates the timing for when we will be where to eat what meal with who.  Dad gets the house in order.  The grass is mowed. Flowers are planted.  Everything is just as it should.  

Question:  This party sounds great!  Why not just skip the church stuff and forty days and plan a yearly party?  Answer:  I don't know.  Probably because it is the way we phage always done it.  

Question:  What will tomorrow be like?  Answer:  Well it will be just like any other monday except I will be a bit tired.  

The following reflects some of how I now treat Easter:

Yesterday, Chuck's blog refletion talked about active listening.  He did a great job in capturing the spiritual implications of simply listening.  (please read it if you have not already). 

As I read it, I thought of my entire lenten journey.  It was all about actively listening to God.  Constantly asking God for clarification about what is being taught and said.  I spend forty days of actively doing the hard work of listening!  Yes indeed I deserve today!  I am a better person and God has lead me to this new reality.  I will indeed celebrate that!!!

Now for the big difference.  Tomorrow I may wake up with a hangover of sorts.  But tomorrow I am still a better person than I was forty days ago.  Tomorrow I know how to listen to my God in a way that will hold the potential to make me even better.  Tomorrow I am gifted the opportunity to continue my lenten journey.  For me I know God would love nothing better than to be completely listened to.  I now know that it does not take a special season for me to step up, listen to God and become a better man.  God is available to me 24/7.  (but truth be told, it is really nice to have lent to shock me back to this reality- after all; today is Easter and I can talk a big story ,but give me another ten or eleven months and I will have ignored most of my own advice!)

Wishing you a happy Easter and an awesome tomorrow!

Peace, Steve Arendt