Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent, traditionally a time for self-reflection, prayer and fasting. The word Lent comes from an old English word “lenten”, meaning Spring. Lent is a bit like Spring cleaning your house after a long winter, throwing open the windows, cleaning, dusting and polishing, cleaning out the closets and drawers, getting rid of what is broken or stained, finding pictures or reading old letters that bring tears or smiles, the house clean and ready for Easter and the coming year.
Lent is spring cleaning for our souls, time to throw open the windows of our lives, get rid of what is broken or stained, holding on to what is ultimately important...... our hearts open and ready for God and the life around us.
Growing up Lent was the time when all my friends would announce what they were giving up for Lent...usually candy or ice cream, I would always give up bubble-gum. it was perfect, my parents wouldn’t let me chew gum anyway, absolutely no sacrifice on my part!
We have grown up with this idea that Lent is the Christian version of New Year’s resolutions, 40 days of self improvement, start a diet, give up chocolate or some other habit, giving up something we loved or enjoyed as a sacrifice to God. I read somewhere that God doesn’t want us to give up something we like or enjoy for Lent, God wants us to give us something that makes us sad or is hurting us.
In recent years I have given up the idea of giving up something for Lent, it seems to me that God probably doesn’t care if we eat Chocolate or chew gum, but he might care about our motives for “giving up” something. Did we give up Chocolate or gum to be able to announce to friends or co-workers what a sacrifice we are making for God, or did we give up something to open a space within us to bring us a closer to God?
In the Gospel, Jesus tells us to beware of practicing our pieties before others in order to be seen by them; for you will have no reward from your father in Heaven. This is an odd Gospel lesson for a day that we walk out of church with a visible and obvious sign of our piety. Perhaps we are being called to examine our motives; why are we fasting? or praying? or giving alms?
For me, Lent has become a time to pay attention to the rhythms of life, to look at the world a little bit different. That is the original meaning of the word “repent”,the original word (metanoia) translates literally ,“a change of mind, a shift in perspective”. We become so overwhelmed with the busyness and daily demands of our lives that we miss the beauty,the strangeness and the holiness present within our daily lives. Lent is the time that God shakes us up and makes us look around and helps us to see the world around us in new ways and catch a glimpse of the presence of the divine.
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that in order to discern the hidden figure, ‘it is often necessary to cross our eyes or stand on our head to see differently..... when the earth and sky are reversed and its entirely plausible that lawns may grow down instead of up....... then its entirely possible to see the hidden” because we are approaching it on its own terms and not on our own. So whatever we decide to give up or take on for Lent let it be to shift our perspective and allow us to see God in new and unexpected ways.
Our Lenten journey must be more then making new years resolutions and talk about sin must be more then confessing and being forgiven. We need to understand that God’s grace is more then the remission of our sins, God’s grace is a gift to us and accepting that grace is a a gift of re-Creation,new vision, new behaviors, new lives.
We enter into a season of preparation for Easter by confronting our own mortality and the brevity of our time here on earth, ashes sketched on our forehead in the shape of a cross, and hearing the words “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”, reminding us that life is uncertain and transient and we don’t have time to waste. that this day, not tomorrow, not next week, or next year, but now, right now, the trumpet is blowing calling us to return to the Lord.
Ash Wednesday dares us to live each moment as if we belong to God to take each moment, each breath we take, as the gift that it is and give up the foolish notion that our lives or our salvation is in our own hands.
On Ash Wednesday God leaves his fingerprint on our foreheads and if we are very quiet and listen, we will hear him whisper in our ear “follow me” and as we start our journey we will need to heed Paul who reminds us that even the most holy life is filled with the good, and the bad, joys and sorrows. Lent is not 40 days to better living, Lent is 40 days to new life.
So let us accept the invitation we have been given and journey to Jerusalem to the foot of the cross and to the tomb, and know absolutely, that it is not the end for us, but just the beginning.
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