A professor once surprised his class with a kind of test. He distributed a piece of paper to each student with nothing on it but a single black dot. He then asked them to write a paragraph describing what they saw.
After a few minutes he collected the papers and read them back to the class. Without exception, each student wrote about the dot: its position, color, and size.
When he finished, the professor said, “None of you will be graded on this, I just wanted you to ponder over something I assumed would happen…and it did. All of you wrote about the black dot while totally ignoring the entire blank portion of the paper.”
The same thing occurs in life. We often limit our horizons by focusing merely on the black spots or dark periods in life – our disappointments, frustrations, anxieties, and fears – while totally ignoring the blank canvas that is wide open to us.
This same scenario might also describe how many Christians view Great Lent: they undertake the Lenten journey focusing solely on what they must “gives up” or forego, rather than the possibilities of what they might receive or achieve, thus creating an attitude and atmosphere with pre-given, self-imposed limitations.
This ultimately defeats the very purpose of the Great Fast: to give up and get rid of excess, sinful, spurious behavior so that better, more appropriate, god-like ones to fill the void.
Fr. John
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