Lent: Lost Tradition Or Modern Practice?
A history and review of my own experience of lent.
Today is the first day of Lent. I actually didn't know this until yesterday evening when one of my friends posted about it on Instagram. So I'm pretty much on top of stuff.
Anyways, I want to share more about lent and my own experience with it because I feel like it can be a forgotten practice. Maybe not forgotten, but perhaps some of its potential and meaning has become misunderstood. So here's a little background for you.
The very origination of lent is a bit hazy. It seems to have originated as more of a two-day observance for preparation in celebration of Easter, but was gradually lengthened when the zeal of the beginning apostolic churches seemed to be weaning.
Lent begins 46 days before Easter Sunday and is tucked into the six weeks leading up to Good Friday and Easter, when Christians remember and celebrate the death of and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a time to honor and commune with Jesus. This was often done by a traditional fast of meat, fish, eggs, and fats, or now by fasting a more modern luxury like chocolate, candy, TV, or social media until Easter Sunday. This type of fasting is meant to create space for further heart work. To help remind, narrow, and quiet our lives. This quieting is then to bring forth new remembrance and deeper love for Jesus as our Savior.
I recently read a book called 40 Days of Decrease. It was an excellent work that challenged the reader to consider using lent as a time to fast from destructive thought-life behaviors such as comparison, escapism, regret, ignorance, etc. The book was arranged for a daily reading that discussed the destructive thought pattern or behavior meant to be fasted for that day, along with a small excerpt of history regarding Lent. I actually ended up doing it, even though it wasn't lent, to simply take on her challenge of being a little more mindful during my day.
Throughout my 40 days, I absolutely adored and appreciated her challenges each morning. I thought it to be such a creative design that approached lent as a heart-full and mindful preparation. Something that is meant to not only emphasize abstinence from a certain distraction or 'need,' but actual inward abstinence to those things that eat us up from the inside out. It gave me a charge to say no to the daily rhythmical thought life that I had so easily routined.
This lent I have decided to fast from Instagram. Which to be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed about. It makes me quite literally cringe that I've become so reliant on it for entertainment.
This giving up of Instagram, though, represents a wider, broader, more destructive inner struggle of comparison and escapism. I wish I could say I always used Instagram with the utmost integrity and healthiest approach possible, but unfortunately, it has become a channel to escape outside my current reality. An aching reminder that I am not a slim bodied 5'7" photographer with pretty blended hair, living in a tropical paradise, that writes for a living.
And even more unfortunate, is that this isn't something I can blame on the creator of Instagram. It's something that has been cultivated because I have allowed the content to nurture the kind of thoughts that aren't grounded or truthful. This has nothing to do with Instagram, and everything to do with my sin, my pride, and the striving of my life to appear and perform a certain way.
And I think that is exactly what lent is for. It is an opportunity to kindly escort out whatever is cluttering our minds. It's a reset on undetected and subtle rhythms or things that we use, eat, and think that take from us. It's an evaluation of what we can remove, to then make room in the home of our life for further holiness.
Jesus, my Savior, has banished my sin to the dust. The truth He speaks over me is so wholesome and so worthy to be lived out and nurtured every day. Without the feed of my Instagram full of pictures that prod my mind, I have the opportunity to do a bit of a mind recharge and truly nurture the truths I know. It's not an automatic thing, but it's an intentional facing toward the sun, that's for sure.
And so, last night I deleted my Instagram account for these next 40 days- who knows maybe even longer- in hopes that I can practice taking every moment, every opportunity, and every thought captive.
Cheers to lent.
