Lenten Observances: Getting Real in 2024

 I have a lot to say about Lent, and you people are going to hear about them. 

Sorry. I just think that lead-in to Festivus is hilarious. 

And since many people think about Lent like they would Festivus, it's a fitting intro.....

From a secular viewpoint, Lent is a very medieval concept, enforced by a powerful church. In reality, giving up some kind of food made sense in February-April--the food stores would have been depleted by then. In a modern age where we can eat food out of season and the supply chains make it a matter of fact that we get everything we want (except during COVID, which was its own kind of Lent), we have to figure out some other way to approach fasting. We can't just take the word fasting for its original meaning--not eating as much, or not eating a standard kind of food (meat, traditionally). 

Lent was perfectly timed to lead up to Easter, so it could also coincide with the 40 days before the resurrection. Forty is symbolic of testing in the Bible--forty days in the ark, forty years wandering in the wilderness for Israel, forty days of before the giving of the Mosaic Law, forty days spying out the land of Canaan, forty days of Jesus' fasting and temptation. These are just a few instances of "forty."

So we come to today, to 2024. Can we really spend forty days leading up to Easter? Forty days to prepare, to fast, to pray, to be ready for the fullness of the gospel, the fullness of deliverance and redemption? To meditate and study on the death, burial, and resurrection of the Son of God?

Why can't we take it seriously? (asks the woman who started this with a reference to Seinfeld?)

My Lenten "give up" is podcasts. I had found they filled up too much of my life. I put them on when I got in the car, took the dogs for a walk, started housework.....whenever.  Too much blah blah, too much politics, too much of the same thing because no one can be that original when the podcast 3-5 times a week (or even once a week, maybe). So I last listened to one Ash Wednesday. (Odd for a person with a podcast to give them up, but, oh well.)

Of course, the thing that is given up must be replaced with something. Well, must it?  Why not quiet? Why not . . . rest, stoppage, ceasing, nothing?

Our pastor gave a fabulous sermon on the Sabbath last Sunday. Think of Lent as a Sabbath. A true Sabbatical. I hope to publish a book soon on rest, because it is an important theme of Scripture. Sabbath (and Lent) are necessary in our rhythms to remind us to rest, reflect, remember: that we are not machines, we are not 24/7, that everything we do is not massively important, that we can depend on God.