What I Learned From Lent: pstrmike

This is the third year that I have practiced Lent. Here are a few things I have learned.

Lent brings me into greater communion with Jesus in the context of His forty days of fasting in the wilderness.

Lent reminds me of mine and other’s humanity, and that we all will return to dust. That is humbling, and places the love of God for me at its proper, higher level. That means I learn to reverance God greater.

Lent allows me comprehend just a bit better that Jesus is near the brokenhearted.

Lent takes me to the cross of Christ, of which without, there is no resurrection. I wore a crucifix last year during Lent, and will do the same this year.

Lent reminds me that God sees our sorrows, and that He “bore our sorrows and carried grief” (Isa 53:4).

Lent reminds me that “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).This is not because I gave something up for Lent, but the giving up of something teaches me through self-denial, spiritual disciplines, and the struggle of keeping a commitment, of the greater struggles that we all face periodically. The experience teaches me about my own flesh and its desires.

Lent, when done for the right reasons, is a greater recognition of our need for submission to the purgative work of the Holy Spirit.

Lent is not an observance of an elementary principle of the world, it is a spiritual pilgrimage within our larger spiritual journey.

Lent reminds me that it “is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).