What is Lent?

What is Lent?

In the early years of the Church, people said, “We want to prepare ourselves to celebrate and receive the power of Easter Sunday.” They called this the season of getting ready for Lent. Lent comes from a Latin word which means, “Lengthening of daylight hours.”

For the Christian, Lent is a forty-day season of self-examination, probing, testing my life, and asking, “What is real? What is my life really built on? Where am I inadequate? Where am I falling short?” Lent lasts forty days because forty is a big number in the Bible.

Noah was in the Ark forty days while God was cleansing the earth of violence and Oppression.

Moses was on the mountain for forty days seeing a vision from God and receiving the 10 Commandments, the Moral law that would change the world. Israel was in the wilderness forty years while God was inviting them to live solely relying on his promises, receiving Manna, bread, one day at a time.

Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days to be alone with his Father, to fast, to be tested and tried. At the end of that forty days Jesus began his amazing ministry. For us, Lent is a season to prepare to celebrate Easter by making more room for Jesus in our lives. Some people think of Lent as a time to randomly give up stuff, but Lent is not really about giving stuff up. Our God is not a God of perpetual deprivation.

Lent is about more, not less.

Lent is about making room to receive more of God. The reason we fast or give up something for Lent is our lives have become so cluttered, so busy, so saturated with to-do lists and distractions that we have no real space for God.

Lent is about more, not less.

That is why Easter is always on the First Sunday after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox. The Spring Equinox is when the amount of light and the amount of darkness in a day are equal. On the next day, there is more light than darkness. The next day, light wins, and it keeps winning every day.

On the first Sunday after the first Easter, the Church shifted the Lord’s Day from Sabbath to a Sunday because every Sunday is Resurrection Day. Every Sunday is now a little mini Easter.

Lent is about more, not less.

Lent traditionally begins on Ash Wednesday with the placement of an ashen cross upon the believer’s forehead or hand as a symbol of our mortality and repentance. The ashen cross is a reminder that it is from dust we came and it is to dust we return, that we are all messed up people in need of a friend, a healer, a forgiver, a Savior who will heap on us grace upon grace upon grace.

Lent is about more of him, and less of me.

I am praying for you. Please pray for me, as together we begin walking with Jesus to the cross and the empty tomb.

Rick