Character is a very important aspect of an individual and helps in the spiritual life of an individual. A person with integrity and character shows good leadership skills and can always be an inspiration to others. But one cannot say that one is born with good character. Rather one imbibes good character through several ways, one of them being through experience and prayer. We get to see characters of integrity and sincerity in the bible, history and in our day to day life. Lent becomes a time to identify these characters and try to get into the character we have identified.
A lent with character is not only with food restrictions but is with certain ideals which identify a person as working for common people, the poor, sick, needy, children and women. We have characters we can take from and become because this becoming is a God inspired process of spiritual growth. In the book of Esther we read about Esther a woman who was courageous enough to reveal Haman’s treachery to the King. She moves beyond the usual barriers and gets into the character that God prepares for her.
St. Ephrem was a church father and doctor of the church who got into the character of making women teachers in the church. Bishop Anthimos writes "Ephrem was a promoter of women folk – from silence to dignity of their own. According to Jacob of Serug, the whole aim of Ephrem's teaching was a new world in which men and women would be equal. Moreover, he calls Ephrem as the second Moses for women because Ephrem took the revolutionary step of forming a women's choir (may be the first in the history of Christianity) and many of Ephrem's hymns were written exclusively for women's choirs. To him, Ephrem founded the women's choir in order to teach the Edessan Christianity right doctrines, made women teachers in the church and thereby promoted women folk from silence to the dignity of teacher. Thereby, "Ephrem presents his church with a new sight of women uttering proclamation". St. Ephrem took it upon himself to fulfill the very difficult role of being a church father with a difference with perfection. Can we also get into the character presented to us by God whereby we do things which we never thought capable of us and which people around us never thought possible?
Irom Sharmila is an ordinary woman but she has kept an entire state in limbo because she has been fasting from November 4, 2000 for repealing of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Recently the court quashed a case of attempted suicide against her. She is free but still fasting. How on earth can we compare the fast or diet restrictions of fifty days in the church to the fifteen year old fast of Irom Sharmila!? She has been playing her character as God wanted it in the hope that anti people laws will be repealed and people can have freedom in their own land. She dreams of a future where the government and people will work and live together instead of fighting each other. Irom Sharmila’s will power has given her the nick name “Iron Lady”. How many of us could fast for a common cause and personalize a problem like Irom Sharmila has done?
Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Character is God given but it has to be discerned and fulfilled by us. Character is also what we receive within us and what comes out from within. It is courage, will and hope that God has great plans for us and for that we have to get into the character that God has chosen for us. 1 Samuel 16:7 says “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
Let this lent be a time to get into character. This is not what we have necessarily done before but what God is backing us to do now. It is not available character but character that we are reaching out to and making as our own. It is the character that is waiting for someone to take and act upon. Are we ready? Amen.
Picture courtesy www.plymouthherald.co.uk
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