This year, unprompted by me, the kids decided to give up things for Lent. This has led to some pretty interesting conversations around the dinner table such as “Can we take a break from our fast on Sundays, and why is it 40 days long”?
I thought this was pretty interesting from author Sharon Hodge Miller:
“Although Lent is often the excuse people use to test drive a new diet or make good on their New Year’s resolution, that is not its purpose. Lent is a time when we prepare for Holy Week by meditating on our fragility before God and our desperate need for a Savior. It is a time when we remember why Jesus had to die. During Lent, we surrender an idol that has assumed improper centrality in our lives, and then we watch as our souls shrink and groan when that idol is taken away. We understand with new clarity that our hearts are indeed ‘idol factories,’ and that we would be hopelessly self-destructive and broken had Christ not intervened.”