Lent: Not Just a Season…A Person

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A Different Question for Lent

Lent begins today, and I won’t start with the typical question: What are you giving up? You might ask, ‘Why am I not posing that question?’ Isn’t that what we ask every year?

We know the rhythm. The ashes. The fasting. The forty-day journey toward the Cross. But perhaps this year, we pause to examine another angle.

Going without is an important spiritual discipline. Fasting strengthens something within us—the quiet interior muscle that helps us resist pulling away from God. It turns our hearts again toward our first Love. It is a beautiful practice for all seasons of the year, including Lent.

Who We Move Toward

Love—that is where I want to linger this Lent. Not to simply focus on what we remove, but Who we move toward. How are we being invited to recognize Love in our midst, engage with Love, fall more deeply into Love…and thus, do everything for Love? 

When we fall deeply in love with the Lord, fasting becomes a response to love, not a requirement. We will go without. We will allow ourselves to be stripped. We will walk wherever He leads. Because when Love is the center of our lives, there is nowhere we won’t go and nothing we won’t do for Him.

Not Just a Season. A Person

If the desert intends to strip away diversions, noise, and busyness through its barren stillness, then perhaps we will begin to notice something unexpected. We may see, not just a season or a forty-day window to go without chocolate, wine, or complaining, but Jesus walking with us in the desert, leading us more closely to His heart.

“Neither natural love nor Divine love will remain unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained by discipline.”—Oswald Chambers

As we embark on this Lenten journey and accept the invitation to deeper Love, may we unearth the hidden treasures awaiting us. And learn to fall more deeply in love with the One who loved us first.

That is the journey of Lent.