The season of Lent is almost upon us, a time when Christians traditionally engage in three sorts of spiritual practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We make a few subtle changes in worship, too, to emphasize the mood of repentance and preparation for baptism and Easter that Lent is supposed to be for. 

When I was preparing for ordained ministry, I encountered plenty of people who thought this whole Lent business was too depressing and severe, a relic of a dark age. I wasn't persuaded--I loved Lent, even before I was a Christian. But now I'm really convinced they were wrong. When I look around at our world today, I don't see people who reject fasting, or almsgiving, or even something like prayer. They just do it in a different way, with a different purpose. "Intermittent fasting," in which people go without food for sixteen or even twenty hours each day, has blossomed into a major health trend. People rise early and put their bodies through strenuous activity for the sake of weight loss, appearance, and the benefits it can have for our mood and focus. Joys and concerns are publicly shared through social media, with liking, sharing, responding, and even giving money serving as our intercession for each other, even if we're not imagining that God is listening. 

The truth is that we all seem to need times where we deny ourselves one thing in order to focus on something different and more important. We eat now and not then, we use our phones now but not later, we push ourselves in one way so that we can be at rest in another way. 

The meaning of Lent, in the end, is mostly that we do this for the sake of God and our faith rather than for the sake of self-improvement. We eat a little differently to feel a hint of what it is like to go without, and to have the freedom to give to others in greater need. We pray more, or differently, to focus our minds on that relationship that will endure when every earthly priority has faded away. We start with the remembrance that we are dust and to dust we shall return, in order to be recalled to the faith that leads to eternal life. 

So don't miss out on any part of Lent this year. We start on March 6th with Ash Wednesday worship at 12 and 7 p.m. We'll worship on Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. with evening prayer and messages on "God's Story and Our Story," covering the major sections and themes of the Scriptures. And of course we will worship every weekend at 5 p.m. Saturday and 8 and 9:30 a.m. Sunday, with word and prayer, confession and forgiveness and the holy gift of the Sacrament. See you in church!