What's the point of Lent, anyway?

I don't mean to be sacrilegious or even disrespectful. The days leading up to Easter absolutely should be filled with reverence and worship. After all, we spend an entire month (and so much more if you work in retail) preparing for Christmas. Why not put the same effort and commitment into celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus?

But what I've never been sure about, never fully understood is the practice of fasting during Lent.

To give you some background, I am a Protestant mutt. I grew up in a Presbyterian and Disciples of Christ church. I was briefly a member of a Methodist church, but have belonged to Baptist churches since college. So the bulk of my upbringin' and churchin' has not focused on giving anything up for the 40 days preceding Easter.

But I've always been drawn to this mysterious discipline. Once in college, I decided to give up pop (or soda to those of you not from here) for Lent. I've never been a big pop drinker, so it wasn't actually difficult (or much of a sacrifice).

Until the night I was visiting my parents and we had burritos for dinner. As I threw back the last of my rootbeer, I realized what I'd done. I drank pop! Drinking rootbeer with burritos was so ingrained in me that I didn't even realize it until it was too late.

Then a couple years ago, I decided to give it another try and gave up chocolate. To be honest, my intentions weren't so honorable or God-focused. I thought restricting my candy intake would jumpstart the weight loss I'm always reaching for. That's why I did it.

But it turned out that every time I wanted chocolate and couldn't have it (something that happened several times a day), I thought about why. Which made me think about the sacrifice Jesus made for me. And so, giving up chocolate that year really did draw me closer to God.

This year, though...this year, I also decided to give up chocolate. And again, I have to confess that my intentions were more about weight loss than spiritual discipline. But this year, I recognized what I was doing and decided not to do it after all.

Just to be clear, the timeline looks like this:

• The few days before Ash Wednesday, it occurred to me that hey, maybe I should give something up this year.
• The day before (this would be Fat Tuesday, for those of you keeping track), I settled on chocolate. I mean, it worked before, right?
• So on Ash Wednesday, I didn't eat chocolate. Same for Thursday and Friday. And Saturday, too.
• Then, on Sunday, I made brownies for our Bible study group.
• And I decided that giving up chocolate wasn't the best way to grow closer to God.

I discussed it with Mark. Was I just giving up because I wanted a brownie? Or was I really making a better decision for my spiritual walk? My loving husband said it was probably a little bit of both.

And he was probably right.

But more importantly, I am committing to reading through the book of Exodus over the next few weeks. I looked through my Bible to see if any of the books had exactly 40 chapters, and Exodus was the only one that met that criteria.

Or is it criterion? I'm not sure on that...

Anyway. Here's the cool part: for the past week, I have been excited to read my Bible each day. To be reminded of what God did for Moses and the Israelites. To notice details and messages I hadn't seen before. To learn what these stories from so long ago have to teach me in 2009.

And I haven't felt that way in a long time. Maybe there's something to this Lent thing after all.

What do you think about Lent? Do you give up something? Add something to your daily life for 40 days? How do you decide what to do or not to do?

Photo by happy homebaker


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