Our Lenten Journey
Lent is often described as a spiritual journey we take each year, beginning with Ash Wednesday and concluding forty days later with Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. It is a time when we are called to take stock of our faith and make the necessary adjustments in our lives to get back in harmony with God.
Each year, in preparation of having our taxes done, or doing them ourselves; we begin to review everything that transpired earlier in the year. We collect bits and pieces of information and receipts, and that paper trail will tell “our story”…at least to the government. On April 15th, we have a financial accounting of the past year.
Lent serves the same purpose…only the stakes are much higher.
We often think of Lent in terms of giving something up…inconveniencing ourselves to show homage to God. This 40 day period is meant to mirror Christ’s 40 days of suffering in the desert.
While Christ certainly suffered hardships while in the desert, those 40 days allowed Him the opportunity to access His situation, and gather the strength to focus on the task before Him. When those 40 days were up, Jesus walked out of that desert prepared to face the challenge before Him. He walked out of the desert able to face even death…death on a cross.
To Christ, those 40 days were a call to action…and they are to us as well. At the end of Lent, we too are supposed to have resolve, to have purpose. Each of us has a higher calling to our lives. We aren’t meant to wander aimlessly in the desert. At some point in our lives, we are supposed to answer God’s call, just like Jesus did.
Our entire life is one big Lenten journey…and at the end of our days, we too will face death. God has a different April 15th deadline for each one of us, an appointed time when there will accounting, not of our money, but of our faith.
As we grow, our faith is supposed to grow as well. If we are 50 years old, and still think of Lent as not having meat on Friday…we haven’t grown in our faith…we have missed God’s teachable moment with us.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” 1 Corinthians 13:11
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