Anyone? Anyone? Beuler?
Lent really is one of my favorite times of the year. And I think it all goes back to one particular Lent, five years ago. Until that year, I hadn't given much though to it; Lent had always seemed like something Catholics practiced, and I was a proud Protestant. I understood the forty days before Easter were special, because it represented Jesus' return to Jerusalem before the crucifixion, but it hadn't ever occurred to me to "give up" anything for Lent, like I'd heard some people do.
But the previous year had been a difficult one. My marriage had ended, and I'd had to learn to adjust to life on my own over nine very painful, confusing months. I'd gone through up and down periods of growing closer to God and then sliding away. All and all, my life had been a hectic roller coaster, and I decided I'd had enough. I wanted to grow closer to God, and Lent was the perfect season to do it.
So I gave up sugar. Not just sweets or desserts, but all refined sugar. No coffee creamer. No sugar cereals. No sugar in my pasta sauce or bread (it was really difficult to find those). No sucrose, fructose, or dextrose. No sugar substitutes, either (bye bye, diet soda). I had to consciously re-arrange my eating habits, shopping habits, and going-out habits to reflect what I had fasted to God over this time.
And I loved it.
I was thrilled with the difficulty of discipline. The extra time in the supermarket and looking at a restaurant menu reminded me of all that God had brought me through in the last year, and how far I'd come by His grace since the previous May. My fasting sugar wasn't simply done to improve my health, or so I could say to people, 'No thanks, I'm fasting sugar for Lent'; every time I craved sugar, or had to watch what I bought, I was reminded of God's faithfulness in my life.
Ever since that year, when I truly felt the Holy Spirit moving in me during the season, I have loved Lent. Even more than Christmas.
Tonight is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, and I was excited. The Ash Wednesday service is one of my favorite services of the year. I always felt moved by the Holy Spirit during the service, the calling for us to be holy, as Christ was holy.
My evenings are much more eventful now than they were during that year-and-change I was living on my own. I live much further from my church, and Hillary and I have to wrangle three little girls together to make it on time. Having to leave so early and get home so late makes it difficult, too, as we've actually got to start our bedtime rituals before we leave for church, just so we can get the kids in bed at a reasonable hour when we get home.
Maybe it was the devil holding us back. Maybe it was just poor planning on our parts. Maybe it was a little of both. But, no matter the cause, Hillary and I found ourselves pulling out of the house at 6:45, for a church service that was half an hour away that started at 7:00. There was no way we were going to make it.
So we turned around before we left our subdivision and returned home. I didn't make it to my beloved Ash Wednesday service.
I was so bummed that, when we got home, I put in my headphones and listened to some Ash Wednesday sermons on YouTube while I fixed dinner for me and Hillary. And, like God so often does when I'm in the wrong, He took the time I was chopping sweet potatoes into fries to set me straight.
If there was ever a single meaning for Ash Wednesday, it has long been lost to antiquity. Today, Ash Wednesday has many meanings. One, to remind us that we have come from the dust, and to the dust we will one day return (Gen. 3:19). Dust and ash, by definition, serves no purpose; it's waste material, only good for throwing out or cleaning up. How much like dust are we to God! God has no necessity of us. He would still be as holy and righteous, ruling over His world, had He never brought man into existence. But that itself is a testimony of God's love: even though we are worth nothing, of no value, God still loves us and makes plans for our lives and desires nothing but the best for us.
Ash Wednesday is also a reminder of the Old Testament tradition of mourning, where the mourner would put ash on their heads as a way to humiliate themselves before God. Humiliate, in this sense, coming from its original root word, 'humility': to take a posture of humility before God in mourning over our own sin that has separated us from Him. During the forty days of Lent, we are to mourn for our sin, understand that it had separated us from God, and spend the season in repentance while we strive to imitate Christ's holiness, because it's God's will that we be conformed into the likeness of His Son. (Romans 8:29).
Lent is a time to prepare our hearts for the upcoming death of our Savior, just as he spent his final forty days in Jerusalem preparing for his own death. It's a time of sacrifice. It's a time of repentance and mourning. And most of all, it's a time to struggle for holiness, a struggle that may have left our sights in the previous year.
And if God was calling me to sacrifice for Lent, maybe the first thing He was calling me to sacrifice was my beloved Ash Wednesday service for the sanity of my family. Because if the service itself had become more important to me than what the service represented - a time of sacrifice and holiness to honor God - then, like many other things I'd given up to God in the past, I needed to let it go.
Don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with being bummed because I missed church. There are definitely worse things to be sad about! But, if time simply wasn't going to permit it this year, I needed to pull myself out of my funk and find where God could use me at home. So I pulled out my earbuds, finished making dinner for me and Hillary, and started Lent by helping get my kids ready for bed with my wife.
I may not have gotten the cross drawn on my forehead with ashes, but it was still a reminder just what the season of Lent is supposed to mean. It's a season of setting myself aside to listen to the Holy Spirit's calling of my life. It's intentional denial of something I normally love, to remove one of the many sources of white noise in my life that prevent me from hearing God's calling. And it's a reminder that I'm a sinful man, that I mess up and need a Savior to remind me of my need for repentance.
I'm going to giving up sweets this year, with two exceptions: a little creamer in my coffee every morning (but no more than one cup), and whatever sugar substitute that's in Shakeology (my breakfast every day). I'm also giving up swearing; even though I don't do it much, it far too often makes its way into my private conversations. And I'm giving up useless internet time, because that bad habit often destroys my evenings and keeps me from making the most of the time God's given me.
Sweets.
Swearing.
And scrolling.
Those are my sacrifices for Lent. It's my prayer that God will use these fasts to help me grow closer to Him, that every time each of these fasts affects my life I'm reminded that I'm nothing but a pile of useless dust, beloved by God for nothing that I could offer Him, and that it was my sin that nailed Jesus to the cross, where He went willingly for me.
Happy Lent, everyone.
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