Dory, that fun, perky little fish from Finding Nemo is one of our favorite movie characters. We can even recite her lines better than the rest of the characters', more than any other character from any other movie for that matter! (If only you could hear recordings of my siblings and friends recite Dory from start to finish! It's hilarious!)
Poor Dory has one fatal flaw, though. She has short-term memory loss and "forgets things almost instantly." Things would be going along just swimmingly...until she forgets what she was doing or where she was going.
You're probably wondering whether this has anything to do with Lent, or whether the poor blogger has ended up like Dory and forgot what the correlation was. (Or maybe it has something to do with Catholics and fish on fridays, but...yeah...let's not get into that. Poor Dory.) Actually, Dory has much in common with the Israelites about whom we read during the latter parts of Lent, but more specifically, she has much in common with us.
Doesn't it seem to you that the Israelites had everything going for them until they "forgot" how loving God was? Doesn't it seem to you that we tend to become so complacent in our faith? We get so comfortable staying where we are in our lives so much so that we forget what we're really supposed to be doing, and it takes a tsunami to shove us off our beach chair and do something to solidly live out our Christianity.
That's what Lent can do. It's a reminder of what we were supposed to be doing in the first place; it brings us back to the basics through our denying ourselves of things we don't really need.
Do I really need to watch all the TV shows that I give so much time for? Do I really need to go shopping for things that will make me look glamourous? Do I really need to be on Facebook so long? (Yeeesss!!.....uhmmm...no. *buries face in arms*)
Take a step back. Are these things doing anything to help us focus our lives around God? Are these going to help us fit through the narrow gate? By refocusing the time we use for these things - ironically, by dropping these and taking up our Crosses - we can end up living lives that are more worth living.
Like Dory, we need that reminder to stay focused on our "P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney." AKA, Heaven.
So have a blessed Lent, everyone! And stay focused! =)
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