What to do about Lent?

The word Lent comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning springtime.

Lent has crept up on me again.  It starts on Ash Wednesday, March 5th, and continues for forty days after that.  

Though I can say that Lent is a season I look forward to, it is also  a season I am  never quite ready for.  I have some inner struggle about what to do about Lent- Should I fast? do a retreat? more intentional prayer?  good works?  give generously to good causes?

 I believe in all of these as worthy spiritual practices, but do them imperfectly and somewhat inconsistently.  Lent gives me a chance to do some of these practices with more intentionality - Luckily I have someone to accompany me and keep me on track, my good wife, Judy, besides a small group of fellow believers that will meet each week during Lent.

Again this year our friend Bruce McNab, an Episcopal priest, has written a short piece that helps set the framework.  Here are a couple of paragraphs from our church newsletter. 

"There’s a modern trend to pooh-pooh fasting and abstinence in Lent and insist that it’s better for Christians to “take on” something worthwhile rather than to “give up” something we’d be better off without anyway. I’m not trying to pick a fight with progressive contemporary clergy. More power to them. (Who could object to more good deeds being done by believers?) But I want to make a case for abstinence, no matter how many additional worthy works you might also want to take on during the forty days before Easter.

In the sixth chapter of Matthew, which is the gospel for Ash Wednesday, Jesus speaks about alms giving, prayer, and fasting—three regular practices of pious Jews. He assumes that his hearers are going to be engaged in all three; he doesn’t say “if you give alms,” or “if you pray,” or “if you fast.” He speaks of “when you give alms…and pray…and fast.” None of the three is optional. We also hear Jesus telling his followers that “unless they deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him,” they cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Fasting and self-denial go hand-in-hand as traditional Lenten disciplines.

Self-denial is not a form of masochism. Self-denial is essential if we’re going to follow Christ on the steep, upward way that leads to life. All of us have appetites, don’t we? Not just for food and drink, but for more money, a nicer car, a vacation place in Arizona (!), thicker hair, or a thinner waistline. We want stuff. For most of us, the stuff we want is innocent enough in a moral sense. But unbridled self-indulgence is unhealthy, even if the things we want are not evil in themselves. Giving in to our every whim turns us, in time, into utterly self-centered creatures, enslaved to our appetites. Jesus says that unless we deny ourselves we cannot be his disciples. We cannot enter his Kingdom."

 Some good thoughts to ponder and then act on. So, Judy and I have decided on our Lenten fast.  In fact I'm looking forward to it.  What about you?

In Montana we  have lots of snow as Lent begins, but Spring will be here by Easter (we hope)!