An Invitation to Lent

As I’ve posted previously with reference to Advent, I have decided to orient my spiritual life this year around the Christian liturgical calendar. As I said before, I am 40 years old, I’ve grown up in the church, I have a Ph.D. in New Testament, I’m a pastor, and as crazy at it sounds I have only in these recent months come to know anything about the Church’s liturgical year.

Over Advent and Christmas I led my young family through this season with daily devotions as we commemorated the incarnation of God. Since then I commemorated Epiphany and have been reflecting on the importance of bearing witness to Jesus and the Gospel through intentional acts of hospitality in these weeks between Epiphany and Lent.

In less than two weeks (Feb 22), Lent will be upon us and I plan on celebrating the 40 days of Lent personally and with my family. This too will be a first for me.

As a resource for discovering the profound spiritual significance of the Christian year, I’ve been using Robert Webber’s book Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year.

Here’s how Webber describes the significance of Lent:

Unfortunately some Christians live as though the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ never happened. Our lives become absorbed in the day-to-day experiences of life. We focus on name-brand clothing, the color of our houses, the size of our bank account, the year and make of our automobile, the prestige in which others hold us, and the symbols of our own power. We too easily forget our Maker and Redeemer, replacing God with things and ambition. Lent is the season that does something about this situation. It calls us back to God, back to basics, back to the spiritual realities of life. It calls us to put ot death the sin and the indifference we have in our hearts toward God and our fellow persons. It beckons us to enter once again into the joy of the Lord–the joy of a new life born out of a death to the old life.

I wonder if I might prod you to consider joining me in the celebration of Lent. Of course many of our readers already do, but I’m certain that there are many who are like me and have never really discovered the spiritual power of orienting life by the Christian calendar.