What are you giving up for Lent? Not as much time on Instagram? Less selfies? Perhaps snacking less? Netflix? Sharing your true feelings and writing them out instead of using emoji’s? Checking your phone every 2 minutes? Sugar? Soda? I guess the list is endless.

Many people have some idea that Lent is about giving stuff up, but may not know much more than that. My personal belief is that I don’t think anyone should have to give up something for Lent for the sake of misery itself (or even for self-betterment).

 Lent is the penitential season in the Christian calendar that traditionally runs 40 days (excluding Sundays) from Ash Wednesday to Easter. This echoes the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert at the onset of His ministry. So, it’s easy to understand how the giving up of things and the fasting from certain foods, or drink, or our electronic tethers is linked to this period. But, Lent wasn’t meant to be the somber season that we imagine. It was meant to be a time of preparation, a trek towards Easter.

 What if we, instead of seeing the discipline of fasting as some food/drink we’re giving up, we see it as making room for those things that bring us closer to Jesus? Instead of losing something, we’re gaining. It is the giving up of something, sometimes good, for the sake of something better.  

 The discipline of fasting is just one of the varied ways that people and traditions have used this season to draw us closer to the heart of Christ. So, what fast? Let me list just three reasons. For one, the discipline of fasting teaches us dependence, that life apart from Christ is not just difficult, but impossible. His daily provisions for us is what keeps us going. Just like God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness wanderings, fasting helps us to remember to trust in Him for our daily bread.  

Second, fasting frees us from disordered loves. We either rid our lives or reorder our competing loves to put God first and second things second. Fasting helps us to examine areas of recurring sin in our lives or refrain (for a time) those things that have taken the place of God.

Thirdly, the 40 days are set aside to prepare us for something better that is yet to come. Lent was meant to focus our thoughts and prepare us for a coming Day. Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. But for us, it’s not just what’s coming on April 1, but a coming Day when, we too, will be resurrected to glory. What begins with ashes ends with a resurrection.