Ever noticed that Easter seems to sneak up on us? While Christmas preparations begin months in advance, culture doesn’t approach Easter similarly. And yet Easter, the celebration of Jesus' resurrection, is the foundation of our faith. The Global Church (Christ followers of many denominations and traditions around the world) has a centuries-old practice known as Lent to help us anticipate Easter by focusing the attention of our hearts and minds.

As a community of people from diverse backgrounds, some of us already have annual Lent practices, while others may have a negative impression of the season because they associate it with legalistic religious rules. Still, others have never even heard of it at all. Whatever your background or experience, we would like to invite you to consider joining the Church around the world in preparing for Easter this year.

Simply put, Lent is the six weeks before Easter, set apart to draw closer to Jesus. It is six weeks of doing life differently - on purpose, for a purpose. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (this year, Wednesday, February 22). This day starts the season with the tradition of reflecting on our mortality and our need for Christ. In many Ash Wednesday church services, ministers and pastors will mark the foreheads of followers with ashes, using the traditional words, “Remember we are dust, and to dust, we will return.” Although those words may seem somber and dark, the intention of Lent is not to send us into a deep brooding about the suffering of Christ and our own humanity, but rather it is an invitation to remember our need for God and a call to return to God wholeheartedly, preparing us to fully embrace the significance of the Holy Week traditions (the week before Easter), culminating in our Easter celebrations.

This year, you might consider participating in an Ash Wednesday service in preparation for Easter. Our friends at New Hope Church in Portland have invited us to join them (details below). Or you might look for a service to attend in your own neighborhood.

Additionally, three primary spiritual practices are traditionally the focus during the six weeks of Lent:

• Prayer (or meditation)
• Fasting (giving up something as a reminder of our desire for God)
• Almsgiving (an old, fancy word for “giving”).

Although these practices may be part of your everyday life, during Lent, we are encouraged to approach them with additional focus, disrupting our daily lives in specific ways to help us recenter our focus and attention on Jesus.

One final consideration— typically, we want to engage in these practices quietly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean secretly. It can be wonderfully encouraging to share our experiences with one another, especially in specific circles of people. However, Jesus reminds us that when we pray, fast, and give, it is meant to be an act of personal devotion rather than a display to others that we are “doing it right.” He simply wants us to remember to check our motives. But we are not meant to live our life of faith alone. So we share our practices as a means of encouragement or support or even to ask others for help when we’re struggling or feeling defeated.

Below you will find questions to serve as prompts and ideas for how you might incorporate prayer, fasting, and almsgiving into your Lent experience, as well as some simple resources to support you. We hope they will be helpful as you consider how you would like to live differently for the six weeks of Lent. Whatever you choose, may God’s Spirit direct you, and may God’s presence and peace be with you as we prepare for Easter.