…if you want to see an example of true patience watch a cat waiting patiently for the mouse it knows is there to crawl to the optimum position for its capture.

The cat will wait for hours, eyes on the prize, as still as a statue until the mouse has come right up to it … and then he pounces. But the point isn’t the pounce it’s the waiting. The cat has to wait in the right way to achieve its goal – patiently preparing. It can not and does not allow itself to get distracted by things around it or it will lose out.

In a couple of weeks we, once again, reach the time of Lent. A time of patient preparation leading up to the resurrection of Jesus and the Salvation of the world.

Many will proudly claim they are giving up wine or chocolate or Facebook or cake for Lent and some will equally proudly share when they give into the temptation and indulge anyway.

The giving up of something for Lent is representative of fasting. Despite some of the more recent modern fads this is not a new-fangled dieting technique but a tool to prepare both the physical and the spiritual body to gain discipline, seek God and deepen prayer.

It is often used before undertaking specific significant tasks. After Jesus’s baptism, He was led by the Holy Spirit into the Wilderness to fast and prepare for His ministry. Here He resisted the devil and the temptations laid before Him and strengthened Himself to be ready for what lay ahead. We remember Jesus’s time in the Wilderness during Lent but are we taking the opportunity of the Lenten time of preparation to patiently prepare spiritually, seek God and deepen prayer?

Are we using the time like the cat waiting for our mouse or are we letting ourselves get too distracted by worldly things around us?

Do we even know what our mouse is? What the task God has for us is? Let’s use this Lent to find out!