I am off to a slow start for my Lenten observance, but as the old aphorism goes, “Better late than never”.
My first action this year, prompted by the realities of Lent, involved asking myself where my heart is. The answer for every Christian should be given over to Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior. However, as I began to examine the things in our life that tend to move me away from His centrality in my life, one thing stood out as a useless waste of time, since it did little or nothing to contribute to my growth in Christ or generally as a decent human being and that was playing the online mobile game, PUBG.
I once justified the time it took as a way to learn how to react under stress and deal with being attacked as well as developing strategies to survive in a kill or be killed environment as one might see in a societal collapse scenario. It did not take long for me to realize that I was a weak gun fighter. My reactions, my hand-eye coordination, while improved, had reached the best I could expect without spending a ridiculous amount of time training myself in movement and muscle memory. When I realized the truth that I am not a natural fighter and the necessary cost was too high for the returns offered, not to mention the vulgarity and other negatives I had to endure within teams, I turned loner, playing by myself, using my evade and counter skills to almost always make it into the top ten when playing as a single against four man teams. Even then, there was no where left to go, other than climb up the points scale, which required an inordinate amount of game time. That time had to come from somewhere, primarily from activities that were more productive avenues of time investment.
So, I decided to abandon the game, initially for Lent, but hopefully forever, as God has better things for me to do with what remaining time he has granted me. Such things include reviving my efforts at writing on this blog. I could say it is for your benefit dear reader, but it is more for me, since the discipline of writing and thinking necessary to do it on a reasonable level are components of the discipleship I sorely need. For Lent I am going to try and post something every day. It will most likely be mundane, but that is not important. What is important is developing the daily discipline to get it done. The profundity will come, if it does, when God so wills. Me, I just need to bear down and output something on a daily basis. This is my beginning. Thank you for reading and my God bless your efforts at your own unique discipleship path. The important thing is to be on the path, borrowing from J. I. Packer’s image of the traveler vs. the balconeer, to avoid sitting on the byway doing nothing productive to advance your life in Christ.
Blessings to you today as you join me on the road.
