Starting Lent–late

It has been a good number of years since I wholeheartedly embraced giving something up for Lent. For me it had become a little twee, ditching chocolate became an excuse to do something that made Easter far more about the egg than about the Son of God. Personally Lent started to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. So I stopped.

And this year started no different, and yet over the last two days I have started to feel that something was missing. I wasn’t missing chocolate or TV or cake or any other such thing, as yet again I had kept all of these in my diet, but something was definitely amiss.

I hardly had to do any soul searching to know that I was missing the deep down relational transaction with God which lies at the heart of Lent. The past few years have been an essential part of my journey to the cross in shedding what Lent had become rather than what it should be. Having now lost that load I was aware that I needed to replace it and come back to a Lent that took me deeper into God and by which I could journey to the cross in a new way.

Cue a frantic post shrove Tuesday search as to what to take up or give up in a way that would make Lent real and meaningful. And hence I find myself back here on the blog I had hoped to continue after the Bible in a year.

This Lent I aim to provide this time each day to journey with God and find the missing importance of the Lenten journey in my life.

God of forgiveness I confess …
my failure to acknowledge your sacrifice
my failure to put you first
my failure to give you my time.

God of the wilderness I seek …
your strength for the journey
your love for the emptiness
your light for my path.

God of all time I look forward …
to the cross
to the empty tomb
to your coming again.