Tuesday, February 12, 2013

What's The Big Deal About Lent, Anyway?

It seems as if the Christmas decorations have just been put away (or not, but that's another post), and the Lenten season is already upon us.  Growing up non-practicing Catholic turned forced to church as a teen Catholic turned Christ follower by choice and currently belonging to a Southern Baptist church I really do not know a lot about this special time observed by many Christians in preparation for celebrating the Resurrection.  I do know that I have been very concerned about the amount of time and energy our family puts into celebrating Christmas compared to Easter, and I have not really known a good way to rectify it.  This year I am determined to change that, not only for myself but for my children.  So I've been doing some research.

It seems that most of my church friends of today look at Lent as a weird Catholic thing.  I wondered if there was something I could gain spiritually from it, though.  This past December our family celebrated Advent for the first time.  We were truly blessed by it, and I believe the time we spent each day with our focus on preparing our hearts was the very best part of our celebration.  A dear friend loaned us a copy of a fabulous resource: "Jotham's Journey" by Arnold Ytreeide.  This devotion/story is something I cannot say enough good things about.  You simply MUST check it out.  This is a post about Lent, and so I'm going to restrain myself from going into any more detail about that book, the first of a series of three.  You can read about it for yourself here: http://www.jothamsjourney.com/  I really hope you do. 

This author has written another book, "Amon's Adventure A Family Story for Easter" that I cannot wait to dive into.  It is designed to be used during the Lenten season in much the same way as the Jotham books are used at Advent.  There are twenty-eight chapters or readings that you can decide how and when to use.  With 40 days of Lent (that are actually 46 days) you have some flexibility to choose how to fit it in with your family schedule.   I know, I totally sound like a commercial.  That's OK - I'm not getting paid for it, I really am pumped and excited to start this book.  

Backing up a bit, you may still be wondering what Lent is, and why I might want to participate in it.  We all have seen the focus on fish sandwiches at all the fast food restaurants on Fridays this time of year, not to mention the fish fry frenzy that happens at the Catholic churches.  You may have heard about "giving something up", and laughed as I have what some of the "sacrifices" were.  In the beginning pages of "Amon's Adventure" is the best explanation I have come across.  Rather than try and rewrite is I am going to share Mr. Ytreeide's excellent thoughts.  The credit goes completely to him, with the exception of Scripture quotes.

Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love .
                                                                                   Joel 2:13

Mr. Ytreeide shares: "Rend your heart.  If a better definition of Lent exists, I don't know what it could be.  The tradition of Lent reaches back to the fourth century A.D.  New converts were baptized on Easter Sunday in those days, and Lent was the official time of preparation for that act of faith.  So, originally, Lent was intended to lead to baptism.

For most Christians today, Lent is more a time of spiritual renewal.  In many churches the focus is still on penance and repentance - of recognizing our own tendencies to sin - but is can also mean any time of concentrated searching for a deeper relationship with God.

The season of Lent is said to last forty days, though if you look at a calendar it actually spans more than that. And in fact, even today, various traditions count the days differently.  In general, though, the forty days of Lent begin on the seventh Wednesday before Easter and run up to Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday), without counting any of the Sundays in between. "

So, Lent is a time of preparation for Easter, as I understand it in much the same way as Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas.  The dates aren't particularly important.  Lent is a tradition and not a biblical mandate.  But as Mr. Ytreeide states so well, "In a world that makes it difficult to focus on God and seek him with determination, Lent, like Advent, is a natural and obvious time for such a quest."

With regards to the idea of "giving something up", I personally believe it CAN be useful.  For example if I choose to give up 15 minutes of sleep to choose to spend some extra time in the Word or in prayer how can that not move me closer in relationship to Him?  If I forsake soda, with the intent to focus on Jesus and his sacrifice each time those pangs of desire hit me, I believe that can be a spiritual growth experience.  For myself, whatever I decide to do about sacrifice will be a private matter.  I will remind my children that just as we are not to pray "for show", fasting and sacrifice is not for public display.  That is my opinion based on Scripture.

Our family will be setting aside special time to read through the "Amon" book.  At Advent we lit candles, and I'd like to add that in to our Lenten celebration as well,  Instead of a wreath with multiple candles I plan to put a spring pillar candle in a special holder we keep on our coffee table.  When Good Friday comes around, we will reflect on our own sin, that which Jesus chose to pay the price for.  If I can find a black pillar candle I will replace the spring color with it for that evening.  I will leave the holder empty on Saturday, and have a pure white or possibly a gold candle for Resurrection Sunday.

As I have kept my eyes open on Pinterest for Easter ideas, this blog post caught my eye: http://impressyourkids.org/a-sense-of-the-resurrection/ 
The 10 activities each involve one of the 5 senses and they look like something my children would learn from.  This was an interesting blog post about a "sacrifice jar":  http://threesidedwheel.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/celebrating-lent-the-bean-jar/  I am sure there are many great ideas out there -please feel free to comment if you have or run across them!

My goal with this post was not to give an exhaustive commentary on Lent, but to iron out my own thoughts and perhaps motivate someone else to consider spending some intentional time preparing for celebrating the Resurrection.  

3 comments:

  1. Hello! This post couldn't be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my good old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this page to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!

    Check out my web blog - grand-jewelry

    ReplyDelete
  2. Howdy just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the images aren't loading properly. I'm not sure why but I think its a linking issue.
    I've tried it in two different browsers and both show the same outcome.

    Also visit my blog ... ankle weights

    ReplyDelete
  3. bookmarked!!, I love your blog!

    Review my website: http://www.cleanserv.co.za

    ReplyDelete

Followers