Lent As Our Everyday Lifestyle
My family always did our best to honor Mom on Mother’s Day. But as we celebrated, we prepared ourselves for the message we were about to receive. On Mother’s Day, my mother always said, “It’s fine that you want to celebrate Mother’s Day, but shouldn’t every day really be Mother’s Day?” Our family knew Mom was right.
The season of Lent has just begun. It’s a season when we as a community and as individuals are invited to take an inventory of where we are in relation to God and to others. Is there anything we can do, any adjustments we can make, to draw closer to God and others?
Lent lasts 40 days or 6 weeks, depending on whether we count Sundays or not. Everything special we do in Lent – pray more, read the Bible more frequently, change our diet, give up a self-indulgent habit, contribute more to charity, participate in a study group – is designed to prepare us for Christ’s sacrificial love in Holy Week and God’s resurrection power that will awaken us Easter morning.
Here’s where I hear my mother’s voice. Mom would say, “Shouldn’t Lent be the way we live all year? Shouldn’t what we do in Lent become our everyday lifestyle?”
Preparing for Portage Faith’s Ash Wednesday Worship I came across a quote (written over 15 years ago) that really struck me:
“The world says prepare for the worst. Secure your borders. Hoard your money and hide it under the bed. Avoid the stranger. Take care of your own, [so that] one day he or she will take care of you. Jesus says, prepare for the best. Live expansive lives. Give generously. Engage the stranger. Care for the needy. As country music singer George Strait reminds us, ‘The hearse doesn’t come with a luggage rack.’ So Lent is not about feeling holy, but about lifelong commitments that help us hold on to the things that [sustain life – life in Christ].”*
Pastor Bill
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*Anschutz, Maryetta, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p.22.
