HISTORICALLY

Lent is more usually identified with the Catholic Church, although it is also observed in many Protestant churches today, especially those with liturgical forms of worship. In the evangelical world, nothing really shaped it in more popular fashion than Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, a book that has sold over 36 million copies in 70 languages and in which every section corresponds to each one of the ‘40 Days of Purpose.’

 

The basic idea surrounding Lent is connected with the 40-day wilderness fast that Jesus entered into as he prepared for public ministry after being baptized by John.[1]

 

FOR SOME

Lent may mean little more than eating a meatless pizza on the Fridays leading up to the Friday of Jesus’ crucifixion. The chances are you won’t lose any weight, it would have tasted better with pepperonis, and the meaning and purpose of what Lent is really all about will likely get lost in the cheese and the crust. If this is you, then I say, “Good luck. You will need it.”

 

FOR OTHERS

each of the 40 days is a call to reflection, repentance and the refreshing of one’s faith walk.

 

FOR ME

the big thing about Lent is reflecting on how I’m doing with the three great questions I repeatedly ask myself and have challenged others to ask themselves for many years. The answers have changed as I have changed during my lifetime, but the questions remain the same: 1) who is God in my life right now? 2) who am I in this powerful new season of my life? and 3) what shall I do with the years that remain?

 

AS YOU REFLECT

on what it means for you to be a true follower of Jesus, here are a few more questions Frederick Buechner[2] adds that I like:

 

“If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?

 

When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

 

If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

 

Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

 

Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

 

If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

 

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sack-cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”

 

Questions. Answers.

 

May Jesus keep us close.

 

 

[1]Mark 1:13; Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13

[2] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, HarperOne, 1993