Don't Miss Out on Lent

Missing out, Lent? Yes. Lent is the forty day season before Easter (it starts next week on March 5). Lent is a heavy-weight season of the Christian year full of richness, potential for encounter with God, and life impact. Unfortunately, Lent is usually taken – if at all – as a light-weight season for giving up chocolate, going to an extra worship service or two and collecting loose change for some good cause. These are all fine things, but taken by themselves they miss the flight on what Lent is intended to be all about.

Life is a journey; cliché, but undeniably true. Likewise, Christianity is meant to be journey. Christianity is not meant to be an event, but a life. We’re all human; we all bleed; we all laugh; we all cry; and we all dream. Christianity is a way of becoming more authentically human; tapping into all the wonders of life, from Sunday symphonies to Wednesday blues and Saturday rock and roll. The seasons of the Church Year are designed to help us become better at being human; better at savoring ordinary joys, like a good cup of tea; weathering the horrible sorrows, like the loss of a loved one. How? By helping us to live more intentionally and to give more attention not only to our ever-present to-do lists, but to the spaces in our lives we ignore, where strangely and scarily, God is often to be found.  

Lent is designed to do this by challenging us to take our spiritual lives more seriously. To set aside forty days to ponder our relationship with God and God’s universe, God and God’s people, and God and our innermost selves. The classic Biblical image for Lent is Jesus’ forty days and nights of temptation in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11); while in the desert, Jesus had plenty of time to ponder life’s mysteries; to pray, to fast, and to be tested. During Lent, the Church invites us to take on the spiritual practices of silence, Scripture reading, and fasting in order to grow into more authentic human beings.

If we miss out on Lent, we might miss out on being our very selves as God intended us to be. If we miss out on Lent, we may become less human, not more. I encourage you to take advantage of Lent this year. Make it a heavy-weight season, not a light-weight season. Don’t miss the flight that is Lent; if you do, you’ll miss out on going to some transforming places.  

Archbishop Rowan Williams On Lent
Two Minute Crash Course on Lent
Observing Lent as a Family