The Gift of Lent

As we begin Lent today, we have another opportunity to approach this weeks between now and Easter as a time of spiritual seeking and growth. Often, Lent is associated with "giving up" something: chocolate, coffee, television, or any number of other pleasurable things. How differently might we approach Lent if we instead saw it as a unique time to gain a new appreciation for our faith and how we live it out.

I was reminded of this when I read an essay about Lent several months ago in the March 9, 2010 issue of The Christian Century. In "Lent's Terrible Gift," Kay Lynn Northcutt, who teaches at Philips Seminary in Oklahoma, writes about how we practice dying during Lent. Balancing a couple of personal stories with the writing of Thomas Merton, Northcutt makes this intriguing suggestion about how to view the season of Lent:

The question "Am I free?" is the terrible gift Lent comes bearing in its arms for us this and every year. Lent asks us how we are living our lives, and reminds us that we die the way we live. Lent is the time not for giving up something of little consequence, but for identifying what is most essential in our lives, what it is that we are living for. As Merton put it, "Ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for" (My Argument with the Gestapo). That is Lent's terrible gift: an examination of our living.

This is a time for asking what are the most important parts of your life right now. After making that list, look it over and pray about it for a few days and ask if these things should be the so important. Death, in Northcutt's assessment, has the potential to help us look at our priorities with fresh eyes, so we can consider whether we are living well or not.

Will you be happy with what you see? Probably not, though I hope you find that certain important things are well balanced and present in your life. After you appreciate those things, imagine what changes you can make to bring other parts of your life into similar balance, with emphasis on the right things. And take the next few days, between now and Easter, to try to better live into that balance. Then this current season of Lent, with it's "terrible gift," will be time well spent.