When was the last time you were in time out? AND... What recent Barack Obama quote of Martin Luther King Jr. is most appropriate to this season?

I, unfortunately, was a product of a less gentle system of discipline than time outs.  The good news is that I can still sit down.  But what I understand about that strategy comes from my brothers and sisters who employ it effectively with their children.

I) Time out does a few things for the misbehaving child.
1) It stops the hurtful/harmful/destructive behavior.  You simply stop and head to time out “place’ – whether that was the corner or somewhere else.  (not the bed, they tell me.)
2) When Time out is over, is expected they can answer the question: Why were you in time out?  They should be able to realize that what they was doing was not helpful…  The pause, the time spent, allows that truth to surface.
3) Return to a relationship that is restored. You don’t stay in Time Out. forever.  It is meant to be the end of the behavior with everything now made right.

So, too, is the season of Lent the church’s version of time out. 

Stop the harmful, destructive behavior.   We call that fasting.  We call that not indulging in foods and addictions that on some level we know are harmful.  Fasting trains us to time ourselves out from the unhelpful preoccupation with self.   We will hear on Friday: Is this the kind of fasting I want?  No – rather, this is… - removing oppression, breaking the yoke, setting free the downtrodden. 

Lent bids us look at our life and our behaviors.  We call that prayer.  We call that reflecting on our lives in terms of the values, not of our parents, but rather of the kingdom of God and his son Jesus.  How is my life following his life?  Am I closer to him or further from him?

Finally, at the end of time out, we are restored to the relationships that we affected.  We call that almsgiving – the choice to let our sacrifices make a difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters.  Our reflection and our prayer have to spill over or they are the empty show Jesus warns us about in the gospel.  We are repaid if our Lenten time out is just about us.  Almsgiving reminds us to choose differently, to let our worldview be different – to realize it is not about me, but about US.  About restored relationships.  About people having food, housing, clothing, education opportunities.  It is about restoring the lives of all our sisters and brothers…

And finally, what recent Barack Obama quote of Martin Luther King Jr. is most appropriate to this season?  In one of the few snippets of campaigning I have heard, Senator Obama was addressing those who said he was too young or too inexperienced.  “To my critics who wonder why I am running, it is because I feel “the fierce urgency of NOW.”   That is what lent is about.  The urgency of now.  Now is the time.  Now is the moment.  Now is the hour and the day and the year.

So, Why are YOU in time out this lent?  And what does the “fierce urgency of NOW” call you to?  If you live those questions well, my hope is that you will live them into the one who is the answer, Jesus our savior.  And it will have been a well spent time out…