Preparing for Lent
We’re in the waning days of Epiphany, and Lent begins in just two days. I’m always sad to see Epiphany go (it has become my very favorite season of the church calendar—anyone else?!), but I also need the deep exhale that Lent brings, the carving out of soul and a good, long stare at the fact that I and the narratives of this world are powerless to fill it.
Lent is a time to join Jesus in his walk through the wilderness in preparation for coming resurrection that is ours through him. My ears automatically perk up at talk of preparation, and my natural drift is to whip myself into a bit of a lather and make the acts of preparation “the thing” instead of the good that is being prepared for. Times of focused confession and repentance and naming the things in our hearts and our world that are still wilderness is good and necessary…and they are best lived as means to a better end. Knowing Christ in his resurrection power is “the thing.”
Since I tend toward finding my comfort and security in the semblance of control that preparation offers, I have found that I need to approach the seasons of preparation (Advent and Lent) with an extra measure of gentleness and slowness. In addition to the traditional practices of fasting, more focused habits of confession of sin and repentance, and giving to the poor (I tend to be a bit more private about my personal practice of these things, but I’m happy to talk about them over DMs or coffee and share resources that have been helpful to me), Word in the Wilderness, a poetry anthology by Malcolm Guite, and Fight Like Jesus by Jason Porterfield have been excellent companions to me in that endeavor in past Lents, and I’m bringing them along again this year. If you’re looking for something gentle and beautiful that will help you watch Jesus closely as he moves toward the Cross and Resurrection, I just can’t recommend them to you enough. If you were planning on reading them too, would you let me know? I’d love to find. a way to do that together.
I’ll also be sharing stories on my blog about some of the areas of my life where I have experienced profound carving out—anxiety, disappointment, grief—and how I have witnessed Christ filling them with his life and healing. I will primarily share those in my monthly email (where I also talk about how I’m learning to notice the kingdom coming in my everyday life, as well as books I’m reading), so visit daniellemellema.com/contact to sign up for those (short, infrequent, non-spammy) emails. The next one will come out at the end of the week.
This is my prayer for you, friends, as you transition into this season of preparation:
O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(The Collect for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, The Feast of the Transfiguration, Book of Common Prayer, 2019)