Lenten Devotional

Joel 2:12-13 (ESV)

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.

Lent is a forty-day season of reflection and preparation for the death of Jesus. It is a time of repentance and meditation, of considering Christ’s suffering and rethinking how we are called to take up our own crosses. Some of us give up things like chocolate or television during this season as a sort of fasting. As a result, we are left to rethink how we live and how we want to live.

Then is Lent a New Year’s resolution for Christians? Not necessarily. Yes, we sacrifice and give up certain pleasures and bad habits, not because of self-improvement or righteous piety, but to reorient our lives towards the cross.

Additionally, Lent is not simply about mirroring Jesus’ fasting in the desert for forty-days and the temptations he had by Satan. Lent is a season where we hear, respond, and arrange our lives to Jesus’ call and the cross. It is a season of giving over our life to death. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die”.

As we embark on this journey towards Good Friday and the cross, we begin (once more) to surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death. However, the cross is not the end to our otherwise happy life, but what Bonhoeffer would say “meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ”.

We are to confront our own guilt, shame, fears, anger, sadness, and sinfulness during Lent, and though we will experience the joy and happiness of Easter and resurrection, we first must walk the long trek to meet Jesus on the cross and encounter the pain and sorrow of Good Friday.

Let us be reminded that we do not have to fear our own shortcomings:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”  Psalm 23:1-4 (NIV)

• Is Lent another New Year’s resolution for you? If yes, why? If no, then how would describe or articulate the importance of Lent?
• What have you given up for Lent? Why?
• What have you learned about your faith, yourself, and suffering during Lent?
• In what ways are you listening to God in this Lenten season?
• What will help you to remain faithful to your Lenten practice? What will pose a challenge to your Lenten practice?