{"id":33995,"date":"2025-03-16T07:00:55","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=33995"},"modified":"2025-03-16T07:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T11:27:13","slug":"lent-walking-on-the-downslope-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/lent-walking-on-the-downslope-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent: Walking on the Downslope of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"I\u2019ve made a big deal over the dozen-plus years of this blog\u2019s existence of why Lent is my least favorite liturgical season. How I washed the ashes off my forehead immediately after leaving my first Ash Wednesday service in my twenties. How Lent often turns into a season of performance art\u2013look how holy I can be for 40 days. But not this year\u2013Lent seems very appropriate this time around.<\/p>\n

In a recent episode of her podcast \u201cEverything Happens,\u201d Kate Bowler described Lent as \u201cthe season for losers.\u201d If you wonder why things seldom if ever work out in the way they would have worked out if\u00a0you<\/strong> were in charge, Lent is your season. If you suspect that a life of faith seeking to follow Jesus and the American story of success if you work hard might not be compatible, sink into the reflection and honesty of Lent.<\/p>\n

A student told me a couple of weeks ago that she strongly believes in the platitude that \u201ceverything happens for a reason\u201d (she didn\u2019t call it a platitude). When asked, I would guess that 75% of any of my classes in any year would agree that this statement is true. Ah, the innocence of 18-22 years olds.<\/p>\n

If is, of course, easy after the fact to come up with a revisionist story of how a painful or destructive event actually turned out to be a good thing. There is a certain comfort in believing that we live in a universe in which everything does indeed work out for good. And, of course, everything\u00a0does<\/strong> have a cause. But the \u201creason\u201d in the platitude has moral import\u2013it means \u201creason\u201d as in \u201cmakes sense.\u201d And the more years one has under one\u2019s belt, the more one learns that sometimes, shit happens. There is no sense, there is no reason, there is no redmption. Lent is the season that invites us to stop avoiding and start inhabiting, as Kate Bowler says, \u201cA Lent for Real Life.\u201d In her podcast, she says that<\/p>\n

For the next 40 days, we walk together on the downslope of God. And yes, Easter is coming. Hope will be realized. The lovely part is going to come true, but we\u2019re not going to skip ahead. This is the season that asks us to stop pretending we\u2019re holding it all together. It is a time to pause, to sit with what\u2019s fragile and unfinished, and let God meet us in the hardest parts of our lives<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you have been finding it more and more difficult to make even a shred of sense of what\u2019s happening around you, go ahead and sink into Lent. Don\u2019t let anyone talk you out of the conviction that things aren\u2019t working out in the way that any reasonable divine being would approve of. Perhaps you will resonate with this song by Katelyn Tarver\u2013let it be your Lenten anthem.<\/p>\n