Across the Pastor’s Desk by Don Rose

For many Christians the season of Lent has begun, and with it comes conversations about what people are choosing to give up for this 40-day season leading up to Easter.

Whether chocolates, desserts, cigars or whatever, most things being given up are for the benefit of the health and fitness of the person giving them up. There is little benefit for anyone else, and if done properly no one would even know that anything is different in that individual’s life.

There is little connection between this practice of giving things and the traditional disciplines or practices of Lent. Those disciplines that have been a part of the tradition for generations are prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Lent has been and continues to be a time of preparation for new believers to be baptized at the Easter vigil.

It has been and is a time for all believers to be renewed and strengthened in faith and witness for the sake of the good news that God showers upon God’s children every day. Jesus’ own life and ministry become models for these disciplines for believers yet today.

Jesus regularly, according to the witness of the Gospels, would get away for prayer. He knew the need to replenish his own spiritual strength in order to be able to be of assistance to others.

God’s people need to be strengthened and renewed by the working of God’s spirit, and prayer is a means toward that renewal.

Prayer is as much taking time to listen for God as it is to speak with God. Often the words spoken in prayer are as much for the benefit of the one who prays as for God.

The scriptures tell us that God knows the needs and desires of people even before they are spoken and yet people speak to God because God invites us to do so.

Fasting is the reminder that food is for use for strength and that we are not to be consumed by food. Food is to bring nourishment, not to banish boredom or frustration.

Fasting reminds the people of God that they are to hunger and thirst for righteousness more than food.

Fasting encourages an awareness of enough for all of God’s children.

Almsgiving is a traditional way of speaking about caring for others who are in need. God’s people are called to see Christ in those whom they meet and to see the world with the eyes of Christ. Thus assistance is shared without condition even as Christ has loved God’s world.

During this season of Lent consider how the traditional disciplines of the season might help to shape and direct your life in a more Christ-like fashion, not just for a season, but for a lifetime.

 

Don Rose is the pastor of Mansfield Lutheran Church in Alden and United Lutheran Church in Walters.