While people seem to understand the concept of “giving up something for Lent,” more often than not you may hear, “what is Lent?”
The 40-day period before Easter is Lent, and we just finished that up last weekend. It’s supposed to have been a time of reflection, self-sacrifice, and purification – as much as possible.
The Acts of the Apostles tell us that Jesus rose from the grave on Easter, and another forty days passed before he ascended into Heaven. Those 40 days are also very important for the foundation of the Church here on Earth, and paved the way for Pentecost, which comes 10 days after the Ascension.
During the 40 days between Easter and the Ascension, Jesus met with his disciples by eating with them, feeding them, and by inviting them to see Him up close. He also made a lot of time for teaching, via conversations as well as instructing them through stories and examples.
Forty days is Biblically significant. Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness before he led the Israelites out of Egypt. Elijah took 40 days to reach Mount Horeb. Noah built an ark that saved everyone during a 40-day flood. Goliath taunted people for 40 days before David took action. Even Jesus Christ Himself spent 40 days in the desert facing temptation and suffering.
With the exception of Jesus, none of these people thought they would be used for anything significant. Moses, Elijah, Noah, and David were just living their lives when God came calling with a greater mission.
So, now that I have had the opportunity to reflect upon my personal 40-day period of Lent and what it means moving forward, I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of the successes.
I was challenged to not start my day with the news. For most of Lent, especially Holy Week, I barely turned on the TV – and when I did, it wasn’t the news.
I also wanted to dedicate part of each day to devotional time, either in Scripture or prayer (or both). Now that I work out of town, I was able to listen while driving to several very insightful podcasts that aided me in this part of my Lenten journey.
One in particular that is worth pointing out showed up in my podcast queue on its own; I had not gone searching for this one. The preacher spoke with a British accent and I didn’t know who he was. But he spent 30 minutes asking questions and responding with Bible-based answers. He began with, “what kind of man do you want to be?” He moved through a variety of questions, such as “do I lust after other women? Do I consume alcohol or drugs? Do I look at pornography? Do I lie, cheat, or steal?” and so on. He kind of went through each of the Ten Commandments in a way and asked the listener to examine his conscience.
All that is fine, but then he turned it around and asked, “what kind of Christian do we want to see?” and went through a similar line of questioning that basically put us in the position of affirming what we’d said to ourselves earlier. In general, this podcast that I can’t seem to find again encouraged me not only to tough it out for 40 days of Lent, but to keep going – do the next right thing, no matter how difficult it may seem or how challenged we might be to stay the course. After all, 10 days after Jesus ascended to Heaven, the Holy Spirit appeared in the Upper Room – and the rest is history.
Michael Bird is a teacher at Faulkner University.
