Theology Blog

Lent is always a powerful time for me. I never know what to expect other than God will show up and I will grow deeply. This year was no exception as nothing went as I planned and it turned out that most of it was far beyond my control. So the quote above is what came to me during this Lent season as my learning.

Lent is about a lot…its about reliving Jesus last 40 days as well as a symbolic representation of Jesus’ time in the desert. It is also a time of reflection and sacrifice as we journey to the cross then to the resurrection. There is probably no limit to all of the meanings that can be experienced from the season and practice of Lent. This Lent as I failed and my failure was beyond my control. It was in that experience that I realized that we as a people are terrible about living in failure. We hate to fail and in our healthy hatred of failure, we deal with our failure in unhealthy ways by blaming others, ignoring our failure etc. The heart of the matter however is that we are imperfect and our failure is normal. Holy Week was filled with failure, by the government, the disciples, and others. Why are we so afraid of failure? What is it so hard to deal with failure when we have the hope of Jesus Christ that redeems our failure? Perhaps Lent is the place where we can live in and recognize our failures and still remember and know something is on the other side.