Wednesday 4 April 2012

40+ Reasons for Lent

Peter Leithart lists 40+ reasons why Lent is good. The list is so good, it makes me feel like I have missed out on something! Some of my favourites include:

  • To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor.
  • Lent is the season of blood and guts and flesh. It is the supremely anti-Gnostic season.
  • Lent is a pursuit of glory, because the Lord exalts those who humble themselves.
  • To observe Lent rightly, we need to be confident that the power to obey God is a gift from God.
  • For Christians, death is not end but beginning. Lent is an extended meditation on that good news.
  • Lent is boot camp for spiritual warriors.
  • We’re hungry for all the wrong things. We need Lent to develop a taste for the fruit of the tree of life – that is, the fruit of the cross.
  • Lent gives the only answer there is to the problem of evil: A cross that triumphs over evil, a death that tramples death.
  • Some demons come out only by prayer and fasting. Seems a good reason to fast and pray.
  • The Christian year has a rhythm, each season its own tonality and coloration. Without Lent, the year is bland.
  • Lent tells us what time it is – the time between resurrection and resurrection.
  • Lent reminds us that Jesus didn’t go to the cross so we can escape the cross; He went to the cross to enable us to bear it after Him.
  • Lent inoculates against sentimentalism.
  • Lent tunes us to the broken beauty of the world.
  • Lent is not for doing things we never do otherwise. Like Sunday, Lent is for intensifying things we do all the time.
Read in full here.

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