If you haven’t looked at a calendar, you might be missing the fact that the seasons of Lent and Easter come very early this year. In fact, Lent begins this month (February 14-Ash Wednesday) and Easter comes on March 31st of this year.
In the life of the church, Lent and Easter are two very powerful seasons of worship, personal faith, formation, and growth. Lent is the season of preparation and Easter is the explosion of God’s new world.
I have, throughout my life, grown more and more to appreciate the season of Lent. When I was a kid, my parents would make us give something up…and I hated that. When I got a bit older, especially in my agnostic years, I gave up on giving up and did what I wanted. In college, I thought Lent was just for Roman Catholics and I would chuckle when my Catholic friends would tell me about what they were giving up. As I got to seminary and after, my whole perspective changed.
Lent, I have come to find, is exactly what I need in my life. I need to be forced to slow down. I do about a million different things because I’m interested in a million different things and I don’t take time to slow down. Lent, however, forces me to do this.
I don’t give up chocolate or sweets or anything like that during Lent (there’s nothing wrong if you do, by the way). Instead, I take more intentional time to stop, listen, pray, reflect, and simply exist. I try to do this to teach myself to do it the rest of the year and some years are more successful than others at accomplishing this.
During the season of Lent, which lasts this year from February 14 to March 30, I will once again try to take time that I’d otherwise be doing, doing, doing, to sit back more. To listen more deeply to Scripture. To pray more. To sit and ponder God.
Being a constant doer, it’s hard for me to make this shift. But I find the deeper spiritual reason to be that much more powerful. Think of it this way: Easter is the day (and season) that speaks the truth of God giving us abundant life. During Lent, in preparation for this, we can’t be doing all the things that take life from us. Instead, we have to reflect on the things which take life from us and find ways to change or stop them.
For me, I lose a lot of myself by constantly doing. So I need a season of quiet and silence and simply being with and for others. More importantly, I need to take the time to sit with God. To do this, some years I pick a character from the Passion narratives of the Gospel and try to follow them through the times before and after Jesus’ death and resurrection. While I can’t get all the details that would be most helpful, I sometimes take the time of reflection to ponder them and what they were thinking and feeling as all these events were unfolding before them.
Other years I take a theme and ponder that. I’ve thought about, “What does it truly mean for God to have taken on flesh?” “How do I see God with us still?” “What new thing is God saying/doing/teaching?”
My encouragement to all of you is simple: take time to be with God during these 40 days of Lent. Slow down; pray; soak in the presence and silence; sit with Jesus. If you’re one who gives things up (objects or behaviors) let this guide your prayer and contemplation. Ask yourself, “Why do I need to give this thing up? How is it robbing me of my experience of God?”
If you’ve never participated in a Lenten discipline, maybe this is the year to start. Give something up; commit to praying at least once per day; set aside time (5 or 10 minutes) to simply sit in silence. Anything at all that helps you commune with God.
Take the gift of these 40 days and let them bring you closer to God.
May you all have a blessed, restorative Lent.