Maybe I’ll give up pop for Lent

Ok, I think I can officially say that I am hooked on ‘Committed’. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a new show on NBC. It is really hard to explain what it’s about. Basically you’ve got two people that are both nuts, but very likeable. They fall in love, and…let the hilarity begin.

I’ve been thinking all day about Derek’s comments basically about wondering why he refers to himself as Lutheran rather than just a Christian. To me it’s more of clarification rather than trying to be exclusionary or implying that you’re better than the other denominations. Although that leads me to my next thought that the denomination you choose should be better than the rest, for you.

Each denomination has basically the same core beliefs. But they each have their own take on many different elements of the rest of the Bibles teachings. I think that each person, if they question if they are in the right denomination, needs to do their homework to find the right church for themselves. This doesn’t make one denomination right and another wrong. But it does make some denominations more right than others.

I’ve also started thinking about the whole giving up something for Lent thing. I don’t usually do that. But, I had the idea planted in my head by a friend over the weekend. It was perfect timing. I just opened my latest issue of National Geographic, which has a cover story about caffeine and our nations dependence on it. There is a great quote in this article that says “the principal reason the caffeine is used around the world is to promote wakefulness. But the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep.” In other words “We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine.”
There are photos of what the caffeine element actually looks like. It’s pretty disgusting. One picture looks like sugar, or what I might imagine cocaine to look like. Another picture shows caffeine being shoveled out of a vat of liquid. It looks like a shovel full of sludge, or maybe snow/slush that is dirtied from road grime. And I drink this stuff every single day.
Maybe I’ll give up pop for Lent.