FreeTruth

Many would ask what Lent is. People put ash on their foreheads; others go without meat or some other pleasure for a few days or weeks; still others fast seriously for a season--and we wonder what to make of it all.

The word "Lent" refers to spring, signalling emergence from the cold barrenness of winter to life-renewal on planet earth. The symbolic usefulness of this is plain. Lent can mark the coming of spring with a reflection upon how our souls may need renewal, as they often grow cold and barren for a season.

From back in the 100s AD some Christians have prepared for the Good Friday/Easter event with fasting and prayer. Marked by repentance, this was a season for personal reflection about one's own relationship with Christ, with an accompanying sorrow and confession over sin.

Someone has written: "The purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial, for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ."

So Lent, with most of its individual components as practiced by many Christians throughout the centuries, is really a merging of many Christian disciplines into one forty day long event.

It's hard to argue with any of this. We evangelicals embrace penitence (not the same as penance), confession, fasting, prayer, self-evaluation, almsgiving, self-denial, and even the observance of holy days. Who can deny the value of these practices? In fact, each (with the exception of holy days) is biblically required of believers in some form or another, at one time and another.

What is optional is whether one attaches them to a Lenten pre-Good Friday/Easter experience. If one chooses to do so, I'd only urge that the following safeguards be observed.

--Lent must never be seen as a form of penance or personal atonement for sin.
--Lent must never be required of a believer by any Church or spiritual authority
--Lent must never be elevated above human tradition status. We must keep in mind our Lord's teaching in Matthew 15:1-9 that traditions are very dangerous things.

If so guarded, this discipline can prove and has proven immensely helpful to many. After all, don't we all have sin-winters in the soul from which we need to emerge into springtime life and renewal?

Labels: Death of Christ, Gospel, Lent, Spiritual disciplines, the passion of Christ