Right about now, I could KILL for a cup of coffee!

The other day Pep brought home some butter run flavored roasted whole coffee beans from Baker Street, the coffee shop downtown. They have an antique coffee roaster and they roast all their own coffee. But, man, did that coffee smell delicious! (of course, coffee always smells just a little better than it actually tastes!)

But THAT is what I am going to have Easter morning!!!

I also gave up music for Lent. Well, with all kinds of sub-clauses and qualifications and exemptions. What I technically gave up was listening to music through my iTunes library here on my main stereo system.

I have sort of decent set-up...

...that's one of the speakers I picked up at garage sale a few years ago for cheap (entertaining the California Raisins!) – but it sounds pretty decent. My computer and iTunes are connected to an old Sherwood receiver, from back in the day when they made some of the best stereo components (I bought this one on eBay, to replace the top of the line one I had bought way back when I was a teenager... and blew up a while ago!).

The sound doesn't quite compare to what I remember from back in those old days – when I had a Dual turntable, Revox reel-to-reel tape deck, and four good size speakers... but I am not sure if that's the difference between digital and analog... or just my mind prettying up the past!

But when I got sick early on this season, and ended up having to spend a lot of time in bed, I gave in and declared listening to my CD player or iPod through earbuds was an exception to my giving up music thing.

Entirely cheating of course! But who is going to bust me? The Lent Police????

Though I guess the experience would have been more meaningful if I really had given up music entirely.

I would have gone totally berserk!!!!

I LOVE music, I just love the pure sound of it, mass strings, the sound of brass instruments, a pounding, driving drum... and I normally have it playing just about ALL the time. So it has been very strangely quiet around here the last few weeks!!!

Still, the "giving up" part of this Lent has been of value. I have stopped now and then and considered how silly my little sacrifices compare to the sacrifice that Jesus made for me – and then stopped and thought just how great His Love must be.

And that has been good.

But really, the question shouldn't be how Lent has been for me.

It shouldn't really be about ME, about MY experience. I guess the real question is – have I more fully given myself to God to let Him accomplish His will in me and through me.

It's not what I got out of it.

It's what God got out of it.

Am I more able to serve Him, to be His hands and feet in the part of the world where he has put me, than I was when I began?

Hmmmm. I am not sure.

I hope so!

Maybe if I had it in my head before I started that that was the goal!