Welcome to Lent at Trinity. Every year for 5 weeks before Easter, Christians observe a season called Lent. Lent is a time to get ready. Just like someone who prefaces big news by asking “Are you sitting down?” the church prepares for the most significant news the world has ever known. Are you sitting down? Jesus has risen from the dead. He has shown the whole world that every claim, every promise of God is true! There is new life in Jesus!
Well Christians don’t prepare for Jesus’ resurrection by sitting down, we prepare by standing up and living out the faith we hold in Christ Jesus. We prepare by turning away from the things that distract us or prevent us from living as God’s people. We also prepare by doing the things God has commanded that we often neglect. You can call these things “fasting” or “works of love and service” but ultimately it is about turning back to God. The church has a name for turning back to God: “repentance.”
Now these terms are used an awful lot during Lent, but you probably already know that these are precisely the things we Christians should be doing all the time. You’re right! Lent is certainly a season set apart for returning to a life of repentance, fasting, and deeds of love and service, but that Christian life is available to all people every day. I pray that this Lenten season you are able to prepare yourself for the new life in Jesus Christ that was revealed fully in his resurrection in the most Christian way possible by living it in your life.
In Christ,
