We are in the liturgical season of Lent: A 40-day season that calls into reflection, repentance, and grace, with God and with one another.
If you observe Lent, you are in a sense following the days that Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for His ministry. You and I, on the other hand, are preparing for Easter. Whether you do that by avoiding certain foods that would feel like a sacrifice to you, adding some devotional readings, fasting, praying, or choosing to be wiser and more engaged with your time, whatever it may be, I think it comes down to a choice.
Do you choose to set something aside for a time? Not out of obligation or legalism, of course—we do it out of a desire to reflect or if we feel a need to repent. As the time of Lent approaches, I am drawn more and more to the idea that any time spent quietly pondering or more intentionally focused on Jesus is a time that can only benefit those choosing to do it.
Does not doing it affect His love for you? No. The last thing I would encourage anyone is to “do more.” He already loves you to perfection. Nothing you do or don’t do can make Him love you any less, nor can observing this Lenten time make Him love you anymore.
But what if keeping Lent caused your love for Him to grow? What if it caused you to know Him a little more? What if it allowed you to be more connected to Him because you’d spent time being purposeful about your pursuance of Him?
Worth it? Maybe it’s just me, but I think with any relationship, if you put in 40 days of intentional time, you would leave that season with a stronger relationship. The cord that tethered you to one another would grow stronger. It would be more durable and less likely to give way under strain.
During my Lenten preparations this year, I came upon a passage by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from his book Crying in the Wilderness. He says:
The Church of God has to be the salt and light of the world.
We are the hope of the hopeless, through the power of God.
We must transfigure a situation of hate and suspicion,
of brokenness and separation, of fear and bitterness.
We have no option. We are servants of the God who reigns and cares.
[God] wants us to be the alternative society; where there is
harshness and insensitivity, we must be compassionate and
caring; where people are statistics, we must show they count
as being of immense value to God; where there is grasping
and selfishness, we must be a sharing community now.
In the early Church people were attracted to the church not so much by the preaching, but by the fact that they saw Christians as a community, living a new life as if what God had done was important, and had made a difference. They saw a community of those who, whether poor or rich, male or female, free or slave, young or old—all quite unbelievably loved and cared for each other. It was the lifestyle of Christians that was witnessing.
God calls us to be light and salt of the world. We are called to be a community of reconciliation, a forgiving community of the forgiven. Our country, and even our church, need such a community—such a witness.
Lent is calling you. Welcome to Lent.