Lenten Meditation

 Significance of Lent

Lent is a forty-day period before Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday. We skip Sundays because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection. This year it begins on 5th March and ends on 19th April 2014, which is the day before Easter.

Lent is that season of the church year where church goers are traditionally asked to give something up for the season. It is a period of self denial to use another term which we are familiar. Lent is about submitting ourselves to God’s will and following His direction wherever it is headed even when you can see a cross at the end of the path. Turn with me to Deuteronomy 26: 1-11

Moses was nearing the end of his life on earth. He would climb to the top of Mt. Nebo soon and see his people depart into the land God had promised them. He himself would not make that journey. For 40 years he had led them through the wilderness. Now their journey of promise was fulfilled. God had kept his word to them and he didn’t want them to forget. The danger of being blessed with bountiful blessings is that we can easily become more focused on the material things and forget the Giver of blessings.

Moses reminded them of his and their personal history. “My father was a wandering Aramean….” It was a personal way to remind people to take their faith history personally, as well as to retell the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants.

Can you imagine what it must have been like for the people of God to see before them the land God had promised to give them? On a hillside they sat back and then listened as Moses preached his farewell address. The Bible doesn’t say much about this account but what it does say is quite clear. Freedom, ownership, responsibility, a nation lay ahead for the people of God. No one offered to stay behind with Moses. All of God’s people continued faithfully forward into the Promised Land.

Lent is God’s way of preparing us for the Promised Land. The promise of salvation belongs to all people who repent and believe the Gospel. Don’t be tempted to think there is another way to God beyond repentance and faith in the Gospel. There are many who see no need for personal penitence. They are wrong.

Lent is a time for soul searching and repentance. It is season for reflection and taking stock. The Early church intended it to be a time of preparation for Easter, when the faithful rededicated themselves to the Lord. By observing the forty days of Lent, Christians imitate Jesus' withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days.

It is good for us to observe Lent as a spiritual discipline. Let us use this period to remember the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. Lent is a season of self denial, a time to give up something. I am not talking about giving up chocolates or your favourite satay, although these could be included. It is a time when we give up the sin of selfishness, pride and hypocrisy. We call ourselves Christians but our hearts are still proud and self centred. Lent is a time for serious examination of our lives. Lent is an attitude.

Colonel Henry Gariepy in his book, "40 Days with the Saviour" tells the story of "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who for many years was a prisoner in Soviet concentration camps. His days were made up of backbreaking labour and slow starvation. One day he gave up, feeling no purpose in fighting on. Laying his shovel down, he walked over to a bench and sat down. He knew that the penalty for sitting down was death. At any moment a guard might order him to get up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would probably beat him to death with a shovel. Solzhenitsyn had seen it happen many times.

As he was sitting there waiting for death, he felt a presence near. He lifted up his eyes and saw and old man with a wrinkled, utterly expressionless face. They had never communicated because prisoners were now allowed to talk. The old man took a stick, and in the sand at Solzhenitsyn's feet he drew the sign of the cross. As Solzhenitsn stared at the cross his entire perspective shifted. He realised at that moment that the cross was the hope of mankind, even against the all-powerful Soviet empire. He slowly got up, picked up the shovel and went back to work under the power of the cross, later to become a prophetic voice to the nations."

I hope as we journey with Jesus to the cross we be reminded of the cost of discipleship. Let us hear again the voice of our Lord saying to us "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." (Matt 16: 24)

Lent is a time not just to give up what distracts us from God or the Gospel. It is also a time to get up and follow him. To see Jesus do his work for forty days is to see God’s plan of redemption fulfilled. In the ancient church, the season of Lent was a period of instruction in the faith.