Happy Ash Wednesday to you all! I hope all my readers ate too many pancakes and enjoyed celebrating Shrove Tuesday yesterday. We had a very pancake-y dinner at home with crispy duck pancakes for our main course followed by more pancakes for pud. And after the fun of Shrove Tuesday, here we are, in Lent. Ash Wednesday always seems like a bit of a solemn day to me. So many good intentions to be better, healthier, godlier…
With that in mind, what have you given up for Lent? I’m going to be staying away from alcohol and crisps (goodbye red wine, see you in 40 days, sob sob). I may need to get a really fiddly child lock for the wine cupboard just to be sure I steer clear of it… I’m sure lots of you will be giving up chocolate, cakes or sweets (or all 3). A certain member of my family will probably be giving up chocolates (note the plural – it’s a technical point but one that allows for quite a lot of chocolate consumption during Lent). Or maybe your Lent promises are focused around tech and social media – no phones after 9pm or no Facebook through Lent. Perhaps screen time is out. I’d love you to give up some other things too – give up feeling guilty, give up criticising yourself and others, give up anger or stress. And yes, I do get that those are probably Lent promises you won’t keep every day.
It’s becoming more common to take things up as well I think. You might be taking up a few jogs a week, or trying to reach a certain number of steps on your Fitbit every day in Lent. Perhaps some of you have persuaded your partner to take up some of the household chores. It could be that instead of giving up social media, you’re taking part in a Lent-based Instagram challenge. Since Lent is a time of preparation, maybe you will take up spending more time with God. A few years ago I committed to spending a solid hour in prayer every weekend during Lent, and it was actually a pretty profound and enlightening experience for me, and definitely one I’d recommend. Or you could take up reading your Bible every day through Lent.
If you’ve read all those ideas above and are now wondering what you should be doing for Lent, let me throw this out there: you can do anything you like or nothing at all! Lent isn’t actually a biblical mandate for us in any way. It developed over time as part of the traditional Christian calendar and is really just a time to open ourselves up to God in preparation for Holy Week and the wonder that is Easter. There are plenty of places in the Bible where we can read passages that influence our understanding of and take on Lent (Jesus’ 40 days of preparation in the desert is the obvious one), but at its heart it is simply a time to prepare ourselves. There’s certainly a case for dispensing with Lent and trying to act as we do in Lent all year round, but let’s be honest with ourselves and say that would be really hard!
So I’m not asking you to think about continuing your Lent habits all year round (although that would be amazing in many ways). Instead, I’d love to encourage you to think about what you could do this year that would really help prepare you to explore Holy Week and Easter in all their glory. That week from Palm Sunday to Easter takes us on an amazing journey alongside Jesus and allows us to dwell on the immense sacrifice that God made and how that has a profound impact on us today. But how do we prepare ourselves for that?
This year a very wonderful friend has bought me a Lent Prayer Tree, which essentially prompts me to pray about a certain person or topic each day through Lent. And for me that idea beats all other ideas. Fasting, reading our Bible, doing more for our friends, family or complete strangers… All of these things are wonderful ways to prepare for Holy Week. But surely nothing prepares us more than spending time with God. Time spent in prayer teaches us to put others first, to give thanks first, to seek God first. I know I go on about this fairly often, but it’s such a crucial message – prayer is our direct line to God and it is so phenomenally powerful. Forget expectations about miraculous tangible changes for a minute and instead just look to the changes in your heart when you spend time in prayer. It’s those changes in our hearts that we need to be better placed to receive God’s gift this Easter.
So, this Lent, whatever other promises you make to yourself, I would love for you to spend more time with God. It doesn’t have to be lengthy, but if you simply try to talk to God more often, making yourself vulnerable and expecting to hear from Him and receive something from Him, you will be opening yourself up for God to prepare you for Holy Week. By talking to God, and giving Him space to talk to us, we can make Him our guide through Lent, leading us towards Holy Week. If we’re honest, we don’t really know what each one of us needs to be able to lock into Easter this year, but God does. So ask Him, and trust Him. He’s got something for each of us.