Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. The past few years I have given up various activities during Lent with varying degrees of success. Last year it was fast food but I think I only lasted a couple of weeks. This year I am giving up TV. Tomorrow morning I will put the call into my cable company and cancel my subscription. Yikes!
Lately, I have noticed that TV is sucking a lot of time away from real life activities. Some nights I come home, turn the TV on around 6pm and before you know it it's 11pm and I have completely wasted an entire night watching re-runs of shows I never liked in the first place. Why is it that bad TV seems more appealing than good silence? How many times can I watch the same Law and Order episodes?
I began to consider giving up TV a couple weeks ago but the final push came Sunday morning when the sermon was on time management. God has a way of making his point very clear to me sometimes. I have to admit that I am a little nervous about my staying power as I just spent all night watching as much TV as I could before finally pulling the plug. I've heard the harder it is to give something up the more God will bless our obedience. If that's the case I should be more blessed than Billy Graham. Only time will tell.
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3 comments:
Try karaoke bars, Fetz.
It worked for me.
Unfortunately, they don't get going until 9:00, so it's tough to do during the week, but if you're watching TV 'til 11:00, that's a couple hours, abyway.
And you're doing something other than channel surfing: singing, picking out songs, talking to other people about singing, dancing.
I've heard you sing. You shouldn't quit the day job (at least not for that reason), but you're as good as most of the people I've heard at karaoke, and you shouldn't be shy.
Lots of opportunities to minister to people in bars, too.
Ciao, U.B.
I spend a lot of time with Mormon missionaries, people with whom I probably wouldn't associate in America, given their affinity for capitalism, the death penalty, and George Bush, but here they're my paisani, and we've spent many a pleasant hour talking about futball Americano and how weird the Italians are.
For them every day is Lent. Even back in the world they don't smoke, drink, drink coffee or tea, or engage in premarital (much less extramarital) sex.
And on the job doing God's work they don't even have a TV in the crib.
So they don't give up anything for Quaresima (what we call it here).
Whereas for me, every day is Fat Tuesday, and I give thanks for that.
I can't think of a good "handle" yet, but I think you know who this is.
U.B., Thanks for posting. I may just try the karaoke bars sometime. I might also quit my day job but the two are not definitively linked.
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