I didn't grow up celebrating Lent, because it wasn't part of my church's tradition. In fact, for most of my life, I didn't even know what Lent was. Then over ten years ago, it was introduced in my church, and I went to my first Lenten service. The service was solemn and reflective and focused on how Christ the Lord suffered for those he came to save. The sign of the cross made of ashes on the forehead seemed really weird to me at first, but when heard more about it, I started to embrace it. In the service, we were encouraged to engage in the tradition of giving up something for forty days. That too, I embraced as a way to fix my mind upon the Savior, while tasting a portion of the self-denial that he exhibited on our behalf.
For a few years I participated in Lent and even encouraged the youth of our church to join in the service and the traditions. But then I came across a calendar in my Bible that I had overlooked until that very moment.....and it rocked my world.
The calendar I found in my NIV Bible was mapped out by the Creator himself. It was a cyclical calendar of consecrated days which highlighted God's appointed times that He had said were to be remembered forever. The calendar I found in my Bible contained no Lent or Easter, no Advent or Christmas, nor Sunday days of worship. It was a Hebrew calendar based on the seasons, governed by the sun and moon that God set in place for this very purpose. The value in recognizing God's calendar is that it powerfully imparts insight for understanding the Word of God.
God's holy calendar includes days of feasting and fasting, reflection and rejoicing, solemnity and worship.....all the things God knows we need to maintain and deepen our relationship with Him. God's divine appointments are the days that our Rabbi Yeshua/Jesus kept when he lived on this earth. He showed us how to live to please God. He affirmed and kept all the words and practices of Scripture in the most perfect and beautiful way.I am lamenting that I see a growing trend to re-institute the practice of celebrating Lent. Why the need to add and subtract from the beauty of God's precious calendar when Yeshua himself says to us, "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you." Our Messiah, his disciples, and the early believers, including Gentiles who were grafted into the commonwealth of Israel, did not celebrate Lent, but during the Feast of Unleavened Bread they "gave up" bread with yeast, symbolizing the danger of permitting unchecked sin to inhabit our lives.
My Lenten Lament is that oftentimes man-made traditions replace God's pre-determined, prophetic, divine appointments that he has said were to be remembered forever. It's as if we have appeased ourselves with lesser things while forfeiting something much more valuable and lasting. It's as if God's wonderful gifts are just waiting for us.....to taste and touch and see. Come and eat, you who are hungry.....the blessings await!
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| How about giving up yeast for the Feast of Unleavened Bread? |
Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch---as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8
