40 Days of Preparation

22 February 2012

In the traditional Christian calendar, today is known as Ash Wednesday and marks the beginning of a 40-day period of time called Lent.
Lent is a ‘ritual’ journey to prepare us for the story of Easter.

As such it’s often a time of repentance – allowing the Spirit time and space to convict us of areas we grieve Christ and need his forgiveness, or where he wants to lead us on new paths of thinking and acting. It is a time to reflect on the passion of Christ to feel again the weight of his love expressed in the free giving of his life on the cross. And as we take that journey, we are prepared for entering into the receiving of resurrection life that the Easter story draws us to.

It’s a wonderful opportunity to create space in our lives for God to speak to us by removing distractions, slowing down and letting God be God.

And in the Year of the Relationships, we remind ourselves in this season of Lent that our right standing before God is only due to Christ and his cross; our place in his kingdom as born again children of God is by the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus.

Let’s enter into this Lent season together...who’s in?

I’ve been thinking of ways to create additional space in my life – not for more activity as I already have spiritual disciplines of scripture reading etc, but for stillness. I sense the need for making an absence in my life as an invitation for God to draw near in a new way.

Historically people have fasted, a day a week (or more) until Easter. In more recent times, people opt to fast from habits such as tea/coffee, TV or retail shopping. The idea is to deprive yourself of something (as long as it won’t kill you!) to help identify in some small way with Christ’s absolute deprivation willingly entered for our sakes.

I invite you to reflect on what you could do to create this space in this season of Lent.