What i've learned from observing Lent

i learned that 40 days is a long time. hee hee.

Our little jar is almost empty - as we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday - i do feel more *aware* & prepared for this season. My littles have been such faithful little participants. We had a few days where we missed - or forgot - but they were few & far between.

i'm reading Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) & there was a part that touched on 'religion'. The character, Levin, has to go to confession before he can get married. He hasn't been for 9 years or more & he's concerned because he doesn't have any 'strong religious feeling' -

"He could see at once that it was utterly impossible for him. He tried to look at it as a meaningless, empty custom, like the custom of paying visits; but he felt that he could not do that either. With regard to religion, Levin, like most of his contemporaries, was in a very uncertain position. He could not believe, yet at the same time he was not firmly convinced that it was all incorrect. And therefore, being unable either to believe in the meaningfulness of what he was doing or to look at it indifferently as at an empty formality, he experienced, all through this time of preparation, a feeling of awkwardness and shame at doing what he himself did not understand and therefore, as his inner voice kept telling him, something false and bad."

And later,

"A young deacon, the two halves of his long back sharply outlined under his thin cassock, met him and, going over to a little table, began at once to read the prayers. As the reading went on, and especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, 'Lord have mercy,' which sounded like 'Lordamerse, Lordamerse,'..."

This is where religion & the reality of a God who desires relationship get confused for so many.
"Oh, God let us be a generation that seeks Your face, oh, God of Jacob" - as Chris Tomlin's song sings...
You don't have to choose between rejecting God, or faking religion.
There's the third alternative.
What if God is real?