March
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
As I write this article, we are one week into the season Lent. Recently I was talking with a friend of mine who is not a church-goer (and didn’t grow up in the church either), and she had a ton of questions about Lent—and a lot of misconceptions about it, too! “Is that when you’re not supposed to have fun or eat chocolate?”
But those misconceptions are also things that those of us who are active in a congregation might wonder about, too. Why do we observe Lent? What are we supposed to do during this season? And why do we say it lasts 40 days, when anyone with a calendar and basic arithmetic skills can see it’s really 48?
Lent as a season grew organically in the early church. The celebration of Easter was always central to our worship as Christians, and as converts came to the church, they were usually baptized on this most important festival day. The season before Easter became a time of preparation, prayer, and study. It became formalized as a period of 40 days to reflect and mirror Jesus’ time in the wilderness.
As the church grew and spread, there were fewer adult converts to the faith, and most people were being baptized as infants. So the season of Lent changed as well, and became a general season of renewal and refocused dedication. Throughout the years, it became a very penitential and somber season, but it doesn’t have to be. We can take Lent seriously as a time for focus on prayer and our relationship with God without insisting that there be no fun (or no chocolate!).
Lent is a time to return to the Lord. To assess the ways our lives have gotten out of sync with God’s intention. Because Jesus mentions them specifically in Matthew 6, the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving have always been central to Lent.
These three things can take many forms: adding a daily devotion, attending midweek services, giving something up, taking on a meaningful practice like daily gratitude or time outside, finding a new charity or cause to support. There’s no one right way to do Lent, and if whatever we choose to do draws us closer to God and to our neighbors, it’s a great thing!
Finally, that question of math: Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Maundy Thursday, when we enter the Great Three Days. And the forty days of Lent do not include Sundays, which, as the day when Christ was raised, are always a feast day.
However you observe Lent—whether it’s through one or more of these practices, or something else entirely—I pray you have a blessed and holy season. May we be drawn in by God’s never-ceasing love, nourished in our faith, and (re-)shaped as God’s hands and feet in the world.
In Christ,
Pastor Laura
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