From multiple posts in the Archives....
Lent is a precious, precious time for me. In fact, I look forward to it with even more anticipation than Advent and Christmas.
Don't get me wrong: I adore Advent and Christmas: the family traditions, the Christmas carols (especially the carols!!), the snugness of the house as winter approaches, the scent of cinnamon and baking wafting from the kitchen, and the anticipation of unveiling the secrets wrapped under the tree.
But while Christmas is an amazing time of year, I admit that the excessive busyness and the hype get to me, robbing me of the joy I should be feeling in celebrating Christ's Incarnation ... which is why I look forward with such anticipation to Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday.
In Lent, little hype and full concentration allow us to focus on God at work in our lives during the Spiritual Spring Cleaning of Lent.
Several years ago I read an incredible post written by the wonderful Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience (my favorite blog). She shared about the process of making Easter as meaningful in our lives as Christmas.
That's a convicting thought, isn't it?
If we invest all this effort, time, and money into celebrating the Incarnation at Christmas, how can we not invest at least the same time and effort, if not more, in celebrating the Resurrection?
Ann writes:
And Advent completes at Lent.
When Christ completes what He came to do.
She continues:
We call it the “spirit of Christmas,” the spirit of giving, and we try to contain it to holly and poinsettias, when it is holy and it is more. The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Easter, the Love that so loved the world, that He gave.
And the words that sting my heart and motivate my soul:
The Incarnation of Christ was meant for the Crucifixion of Christ and we never incarnate Christ until we abdicate self.
And "abdicat[ing] self" is the whole meaning behind the practice of Lent.
And I think it's perhaps why Lent feels so precious to me. For in the abdication of self, we may gain the merest glimpse of His glory: the swirl of His cloak, His whisper in the wind, His hand on our shoulder as He nudges us onward toward His holiness.
And thus Lent is one way to join Christ on His journey to Calvary. It's a gift, really, to become one of the weeping women of His beloved city, the city He wept over while clad in bloody garments on His Way to the Cross, the women of Jerusalem whom He took the time to greet and to warn despite searing pain and the weight of the world on His shoulders, beaten raw, seeping blood.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming...." (Luke 23:28-29, ESV)Lent allows us to join Jesus on the Road to Calvary, sharing a minuscule bit of His pain as we follow in His footsteps, only imagining what He willingly bore for us: the agony, the betrayals, the sins of past, present, and future generations ... of all humanity. Even the mere visualization stabs my heart, much less the real experience of Christ's obedient suffering.
The following was composed years ago by myself and Pastor Stephen Sammons of Lake Murray Community Church regarding Ash Wednesday and Lent:
Irenaeus (125AD–195 AD), mentions the idea of spending some time fasting in preparation for Easter. This developed into the observance of Lent (Council of Nicea, 325 AD). Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays as they are always days of celebrating the Resurrection) preceding Easter. The forty days of Lent are used to parallel the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and praying, before starting His earthly ministry. “Ash Wednesday” has been historically recognized as the day to initiate the period of fasting and repentance known as Lent. It's called "Ash Wednesday" because ashes were traditionally used to mark the foreheads or hands of those who attended church on that day.
In the Old Testament, ashes are a sign of humility and repentance of sin. Jesus mentions repenting in sackcloth and ashes in Matthew 11:21. A mark is a sign of ownership; in Ezekiel 9:4-6, a mark on the foreheads of the people provided protection to those who served God. Therefore, a mark of ashes was used to show repentance of our sins and complete ownership by God.
God calls us to do spiritual housecleaning every day. Our spiritual life is a day-by-day (in fact, moment-by-moment) walk with our Heavenly Father. However, this day can serve as a reminder of the need for us to take a spiritual inventory. We can take this occasion to come quietly and reverently before the Lord, offering our lives to Him to examine: Ask Him where He wants to work. Ask Him what He wants to change. Maybe there are some patterns of thinking and habits that we have fallen into that need reevaluated; maybe God is calling us to some new habits and a new manner of investing our precious time so it can reap eternal benefits.
If you would like to read more about Lent, click on the "On Lent" option under this blog's header.
The life and writings of Saint John of the Cross have inspired me over the years, and here is one of my favorite quotations from his writings:
"The Lord measures our perfection neither by the multitude nor by the magnitude of our deeds, but by the manner in which we perform them."
~Saint John of the Cross
During this Lent, may we walk with Him as He stumbles forward, humanly weak but divinely strong, as "he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8, ESV).
And may we be so obedient in our Lenten disciplines, empowered by Christ and not ourselves as He molds us into His image, cutting away the sinful dross that accumulates all too easily in our lives.
Wishing you a holy Lent,
