For a child who didn’t spend much time in church, Lent was always about what my friends were giving up. Giving up chocolate. Giving up candy. Giving up cussing. Giving up rock ‘n roll. I didn’t get it, but I knew it had something to do with sacrifice.

Now I spend a lot of time in church, but I admit that I still don’t have a full grasp on Lent. Yet I am grateful for these 40 days that remind me to be attentive to the pushes and pulls in my life that diminish me and my relationships with God, the people around me, and yes, even the people I don’t want around me.

So I’ve decided to give up something for Lent. 

I’m giving up on giving up.

I’m giving up on giving up on the hope that people can change. On the hope that I can change. Because for all the evidence to the contrary, for all the times that I have failed to make the smallest change, for all the times that people I so need to be different have failed to change to my specifications or theirs, for all the stalled attempts at change, people do change. Sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly. Addicts quit using, alcoholics quit drinking, cheaters quit cheating, haters quit hating.

I used to lie a lot. As a child, telling a lie was the best way I knew to avoid a big blow-up, and we had enough of those. It was my way of emotionally ducking and running for cover. As I grew up, I realized that this coping mechanism had become a knee-jerk habit – I would say whatever I could to avoid conflict. The words just flowed from my mouth so naturally. It was so much easier than the truth! It didn’t serve me well. I honestly (!) didn’t know how to stop. So I prayed.  And I prayed. And I prayed. And one day I woke up and realized, I had changed. Telling a lie was no longer my default setting. The truth had literally set me free.

Can people change? Ask Anne LaMott: Every last one of us is dogged by something we given up trying to fix.  A bad habit, a bit of perfectionism or shame or laziness, while at the same time every one of us knows a story of personal change so mighty, so stunning, so impressive that it stands as undeniable proof that indeed people can and do change.

I’m giving up on giving up on the hope that the world can change. When I see no sign of it, I’m going to remember Martin Luther King’s words, “The arc of the universe is long and it bends toward justice.” I’m going to take hope from all the struggles that were waged for years and decades in what must have seemed like hopeless causes, yet when the time was right, overnight, the world was changed forever. Decades of struggle, and then suddenly one night, the Berlin Wall came down. Decades of struggle, and suddenly apartheid was dismantled. Decades, indeed centuries of struggle, state-sanctioned racial barriers one after another came crashing down. Decades of struggle, then overnight, gay couples can be married under Alabama law.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” says the apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews.

“Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change,” says Jim Wallis of Sojourners.

Yes, indeed.

I’m giving up on giving up – on God. God has never given up on me, even when I’ve given up on myself. God has never given up on humanity, no matter how many times humanity turns its back on God. We can’t do it on our own, but change is possible because God is always in the mix.

Because God is always doing a new thing – can you not behold it?

-Rev. Angie Wright