I am grateful for the season of lent approaching.
There has been lots of wandering, struggling, realizing hard truths in my life of late. How fortuitous that the season of lent is upon us. A time to fall in love with the good news of Christ all over again. To let it wash over me afresh.
I need to give up to realize how much I need. To know I can’t do any of it on my own. To remember how much He gave up. Lent allows us the space to do that.
The Village Churchs’ lenten guide has some great ideas for the season. Instead of choosing one thing to give up for the 46 day period, you pick an area per week to focus on. Food, social media and sleep are a few examples. I like this approach because it allows me to see my dependency, and distraction in each area.
I also love the idea of feasting at the end of each week. Such a beautiful reminder that in giving up, we get. Where we surrender, we find our supply. Where there is fasting, there will be feasting. Our offerings are never enough, and yet in Him we always have abundance.
I need to get back to His heart, to the gospel. I’m desperate for it. It’s my only hope.
I want to help teach my kids about breathing in His grace, to help them grasp the depths from which they’ve been pulled. To rejoice in the resurrection.
So we enter lent.
I’ll be using a combination of this Lenten devotional for kids, this reading by Noel Piper that can be used each week during Lent or each day during Holy Week, this Lent guide and devotional from the Village Church that has a great guide for fasting each week, and Ann Voskamp’s 17 day lenten guide along with her free prints to make an Easter tree.
Some of these will be for personal use, others for the family. With the age range we have, it’s nice to mix and match and have something simpler for the little and something more meaty for the big. I’m trying to not overcomplicate it, so it doesn’t seem like a burden.
Lent is a season of remembering, not a time to earn our way into God’s graces.
I hope if you’re not familiar with lent, that these resources can be an insight into a tradition centuries old. That you can spend this season in thought about what Christ has done for you. How he was tested over and over, tried and found faultless. The perfect sacrifice, which He willingly gave Himself up as. He let himself hang on a cross to pay the punishment we deserve. Then, three days later He conquered death, and our sin and rose victorious! That as long as I accept Jesus, want Jesus, submit to Him as King, all of my sin is paid for. I don’t need to get my act together to come to Him, or work for years to make myself better, in this moment, with all my weaknesses, failures, shortcomings, and dirtiness, He loves me. Accepts me. “O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be!”
I hope in this season, you will once more be captivated with the gospel!