Lent is a time period with purpose. It’s a repeated season each year to help you take stock of your life. You’re invited to process with God experiences of recent months. You can be honest about your frailties, disappointments, and sin while you rejoice in God’s goodness and grace offered to you. Professor Esau McCaulley says, “we hope that as Christians we mature and grow and become more and more like Christ. But the church in its wisdom assumes we will fail, even after our baptism. The church presumes that life is long and zeal fades, not just for some of us but for all. So it has included within its life a season in which all of us can recapture our love for God and his kingdom and cast off those things that so easily entangle us.”
During this time the spotlight is placed on God’s goodness and grace, even above whatever we may think we need. Simply put, we seek communion with the risen Lord. Such communion is experienced through both solitude and solidarity.
Solitude provides undistracted one-on-one time between you and the resurrected Jesus.
Solidarity invites you to share this journey with others as you grow alongside them.
In fact “journey” is a good word for this season. You’re going somewhere and with someone. You are moving toward Holy Week and Easter day. You’re also walking beside Jesus and in the company of each other.
Lent is 40 days before Easter counting each day except Sundays. It begins with Ash Wednesday (this year on Feb 22) and continues through Saturday, April 8 (the day before Easter).
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