Time to move on...

Hi everyone!

Apologies once again for the gap in posts (seems like I should make this a monthly post LOL!)

Seriously though, I do apologise for the delay in writing and for not getting any more Lent posts up. I have recently moved and we didn't have internet for a whole month (another story for another day) but yes, now we have it, I'll be back online and hope to have a post for you every 2 weeks.

But yes, back to that news in the last paragraph- I've moved. It's not a spur of the moment thing, I've been planning to move for a few months now, but it's finally happened.

I haven't just moved down the road though, I've moved to the other side of the city and with that has brought many interesting experiences and adjustments to get use to being in a different location and in a different environment to the one I've become very use to.

Like any move, there's been the setting up of rooms, the travelling of stuff and the joy of having boxes around the place and never having any time to do anything with them. Along with this though, there's been the differences that take a bit of getting use to - like being at the Easter Triduum (for those who don't know what that is- it's the time between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday) and not being in my home parish- having different ways of doing things and being in a different place in general when you are so use to being at the same place for so long can be a bit of a shock.

As the weeks go on however, I am getting more and more use to being in a new place and I feel as if it is now more home than my old place is. I am enjoying the new journeys and I am fortunate to have some great housemates which has made the whole thing even smoother than usual.

I write all this above as I think it relates very well to where I reckon a lot of you are as we head out of Lent and into this Easter season.

For many people, there were things that you did over Lent that were different to what you had done before (sacrifices made, attitudes changed) and you are not where you were when we started those 40 something days ago.

The problem with this is that now that Lent is over and you are once again able to do the things you could do before, there's a temptation to go back to what is comfortable and you know the outcome of - to slip back into bad habits or lose the progress made during this time in the desert.

This is not however what God has called us to. We are always called to something greater and to grow in ourselves and our ever deepening relationship with Christ.

Just like how for me, getting use to moving has taken time - so it is with you and your changes. For everyone of us, change is a difficult and at times scary thing - but it is so necessary if we want to keep growing and it is vital that we stick to the path, no matter how challenging it might become.

I've written before about how you need to keep going at something for it to become a habit and the same relates for the changes we have made over the Lenten period.

It is great to have given up chocolate, being angry, being more compassionate to others or to have begun to read more scripture or go to mass more often over these last few days, but if we don't keep on with this after Lent then we will miss out on our chance to grow as people of God.

To really see how God will work in your life, you need to take your Lenten promise and keep running with it for all of your life. It should become part of your psyche and another building block to your development as a Child of Christ.

Now I don't mean that if you've given up something, you must keep giving it up, but I do mean that you shouldn't go back to old ways.

For example, one of the things I did this Lent was I had a few weeks where I took a complete break from social media. Now while it is tempting to go back to spending every spare moment looking at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the truth is, I know how much of a waste of time that was and so I am now going to limit my time on these, knowing I'll be better off because of it.

If we are to be the Easter people God wants us to be, then we need to make sure that we keep alive the light that God calls us to carry- and that includes working to become the people we started to grow into over Lent.

Now that doesn't mean we aren't going to stumble every now and then - that's human nature but we know from Christ rising for us that he won't ever not be there for us and in these times, we need to turn to him and then keep powering on.

So don't let the work you've done over Lent go by and in the process lose the real value of Easter and Resurrection Day. Make this be your move to a greater and better life- as God intended it to be.

Praying for you all and till next time...