How I Created an Intentional Lent
I didn’t have regular exposure to church traditions growing up, with sporadic attendance throughout my childhood and abandoning church-going altogether when I hit my early teens.
When I went back to church in early adulthood, I attended a Methodist church that had liturgies and followed a liturgical calendar on most Sundays. It was in my time there that I was first introduced to Lent by attending an Ash Wednesday service with my cell group. Year after year, I would occasionally attend these services, or observe Lent with a devotional. But I don’t remember much, apart from my efforts to adhere to a ‘good girl’ image or to check it perfectly off my list of to-dos. Of course it’s good to observe Lent, I’d say to others, having only a vague idea that it’ll contribute to my ‘growth’. I knew all the right things to say and all the right things to do.
There were some sincere attempts at observing Lent. One year I chose to fast from social media. Another year, most notably, Jon and I chose to spend Lent fasting (abstaining) from each other when we were getting to know each other. I grew much, much closer to God in the forced absence of that budding romance.
But as I grew more comfortable in my adulthood, with graduation, career changes, marriage, moving to another church, and managing home life, I lost touch with this rhythm. It was a ‘good to have,’ but not necessary.
In the past couple of months, a lot of the things I have read and pursued pointed me to how a richer, more meaningful, and beautiful life lived on this side of eternity is within my grasp. The life I now live in Christ isn’t lacklustre and a set of rules and restrictions. It’s a deeper well that never runs dry. Its hues and tones brighter, more saturated than any man-made thing.
Because that’s true, because the life that I now have in Christ extends to all parts of my life, it matters how I live my days and my moments. The way I do my housework, my design work, or the way I set the table for dinner... A voracious hunger grew, and I questioned how I could begin to set my life up to help myself to be formed towards God in the every-day-ness of life?
That’s where I circled back to liturgy.
“A liturgy is a practice that teaches us how to love. Or to put it another way: a liturgy is something we do, and what we do does something to us.”
—Autumn Kern, Liturgia guide
The next thing I did was ask my father-in-law for the book titled Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God. I knew he introduced this book as a structure for my church to plan worship services around, and is teaching classes on it in his current church. Thankfully, he had a brand new copy, and I worked my way through it right before Lent started.
To inhabit the Lenten season, I chose to fast from most foods (except for fruits and water) for Friday lunch, as well as social media for the day. In its place, I’d spend the hour praying, reading the Bible or an accompanying Christian book, and meditate on the theme for the week.
“Each year the season of Lent asks us to embrace a spiritual gravity, a downward movement of the soul, a turning from our self-sufficiency and sinfulness. In such quiet turning, we are humbled and thus made ready to receive from God a fresh and joyous grace.
Lent [is the] six-week season that leads up to Pascha (Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday). Dust and ashes… symbolize two themes at the heart of Lent: our creaturely mortality and our moral culpability.”
—Bobby Gross, Living the Christian Year
On the first Friday of my fast, I sat up in bed in the morning, thumbing my phone and scrolling a food delivery app, undecided if I should spend the money and get something hearty and convenient so I could get through the fasted lunch without issue. I agonised over a seemingly simple thing like breakfast. But flowing hidden beneath was fear and worry, because I wanted to amply prepare for the fast by eating a large breakfast. I really didn’t want to experience too much hunger.
I chose not to order in the big breakfast (literally, because I was considering McDonald’s) in the end. Here’s a confession, though: I just wanted to avoid spending the money.
As I approached lunch time I felt the hunger pangs and sat down on the couch to begin the hour proper. In pausing and in feeling the emptiness of my stomach, my impulse to plan ahead and control every circumstance’s iteration grew large in my mind as I reflected on my morning’s reaction to the day. I began to see my pride in wanting to get a meal through the Grabfood delivery platform—an expensive and delicious meal, full of fatty, rich foods, compared to just eating whatever’s at home and being contented with that. That unveiled a deeper realisation: when it came to meals, in general, a sense of entitlement dominated when I had a craving. I’d want it now. It is usually an annoyance to eat whatever I have in the home. I’d be dissatisfied with that — I just wanted a quick, fast and delicious meal from a restaurant, but instead, ate a sandwich.
Fasting humbled me even more.
To do so deliberately and face up to my hunger forced me to confront all the ways I automatically scramble to try to mitigate the cry of my human body through an app or through the most convenient way possible. That exposed my crutches. Shouldn’t I be living by every word that comes from the mouth of God?
“[The LORD] humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna… in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”
—Deuteronomy 8:3
Another confession: I used to scoff, all the time, at the Israelites’ whining in the wilderness during their journey between Egypt and the Promised Land. Especially at this part of their journey:
“The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!’”
—Numbers 11:4-6
My scoffing stopped when I realised I’m the whiny Israelite during most of my days, unwilling to bring myself to be humbled to eat plain manna (maybe that’s just a sandwich, on most days, which is definitely more tasty than the manna the Israelites ate), unwilling to see the value of God’s word as my sustenance.
Hunger, according to God, is a good thing. It helps me realise my creatureliness: I am at the mercy of God. I am not self-sufficient, and I need to be reminded of that constantly.
Living in a modern time and place forms a dangerous amnesia to that fact because of the existence of convenience and abundance. My fear of hunger from not acting on my plans, and the impulse of constantly ensuring to provide for myself lends more evidence to that. If I keep living in autopilot in this manner, the reality of God being God—my provider, creator, king, will be an intellectual exercise more so than a lived reality.
I’m young in this, but already so enriched.
I hope to weave together theological liturgies in my life, for as long as I have breath.