Mike Rusch

…Lent & Preparation

the Christian tradition of Lent is underway and I’m really pleasantly surprised to find so many of the “less traditional” Christians I know who are returning to this very traditional practice. However, for them this is not just a return to a tradition or a practice for the sake of simply doing it. This is a return with incredibly deep & very personal meaning.

If you are not familiar, Lent is a time of preparation for a believer. It is a season of penance, reflection, self-denial and fasting in order to prepare us for Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

And, I’ll be honest. For most of my life, I wasn’t really someone who thought “tradition” was really very useful. My family wasn’t one that attended a traditional church where Lent was practiced, so I didn’t really understand it either.

As the relationship between some people within faith communities has intersected with the world around, it has caused tradition to sometimes be set aside in the name of trying to be relevant (true I am guilty of this, but don’t get me started - that’s a post for another day). As a result, seasons of life and traditions within the Church, like Lent, have fallen from importance.

Today in our culture, I see this changing.

I once heard Shane Hipps describe how elements of self-denial (a tradition within a Christian faith community) can be practices to help move one’s heart closer to God. He explained it through a short story from his childhood when he would ride his bike to the swimming pool in the summers. However, there was one very large & busy road that had to be crossed in order to reach the pool. As a boy, he would become angry at those cars because they caused him to wait and prevented him from reaching the pool He didn’t see their value. However, when he turned 16, these cars suddenly became of great value. These cars that once seemed like a barrier were actually now a great way to get to the swimming pool in the summers.

His analogy was this - as we grow and mature, those things that don’t seem to have value at some point become valuable.  The things we once thought were barriers can actually be the vehicles that take us to where we desire to go.

But they don’t have value for what they are, but for what they can do.

In Joel 2:12-18, I found this story of a time of preparation by the nation of Israel as they sought for their God as a community of people.

“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

Rend your heart and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.

Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber.

Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O LORD. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ “

Then the LORD will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people.

Today, for me, these ancient practices we find in the liturgical calendar are becoming alive again.

Not for what they are, but for what they can do in my heart to cause me to move closer to the heart of God.

Not for the sake of the tradition, but because the tradition began with people just like you and I.

People who were seeking a car and not a bicycle.

?

Mark 2:19-20

And Jesus said to them, “While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

“But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.”

Come, thou Fount of every blessing, 
tune my heart to sing thy grace; 
streams of mercy, never ceasing, 
call for songs of loudest praise. 
Teach me some melodious sonnet, 
sung by flaming tongues above. 
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, 
mount of thy redeeming love. 

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; 
hither by thy help I'm come; 
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, 
safely to arrive at home. 
Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
wandering from the fold of God; 
he, to rescue me from danger, 
interposed his precious blood. 

O to grace how great a debtor 
daily I'm constrained to be! 
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, 
bind my wandering heart to thee. 
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 
prone to leave the God I love; 
here's my heart, O take and seal it, 
seal it for thy courts above.