I remember sitting with my Life Group (in person) a year ago, having a conversation about why we practice Lent. We talked about what we were giving up or what we were going to take on, and we wrestled with why we entered into this practice. “I think we give things up to purposefully make life a little harder for ourselves so that we can practice relying on God,” I said. “Then, when we fall on hard times beyond our control, we are already primed to turn to God and rely on Him.” Little did I know that in only a few short weeks after this conversation, still in the midst of Lent, a global pandemic would reach our part of the world and shut everything down. The world that we knew was taken away from us, we lost so much control, and we’re all still waiting for this to be over.

 2020 marked a change in all of our lives. It felt like we entered into a season of loss that we still haven’t exited, one year later. So how do we step into Lent once more when we’re already overwhelmed with a year that deprived us of so much?

 That perspective is valid, depending on how we approach Lent. We live in a consumerist society that tries to convince us that we are not satisfied with what we have. And that dissatisfaction has created an entire self-help industry, selling ‘personal development and improvement’. It can be easy to confuse this with spirituality, especially when so many people call them the same thing. So when we look at Lent through this lens, Lent becomes an opportunity to root out bad habits and make ourselves better. But if we could make ourselves righteous on our own, then what is the point of Good Friday and Easter?

 When Lent is seen as simply a means to become more physically or mentally healthy, we take the focus off of Jesus and place it onto ourselves, thinking that our own will to change the external parts of our lives will have an impact on the deepest places that need to be healed as well. And with those places of our hearts and souls still completely wounded and raw, it makes complete sense that we don’t feel strong enough to do Lent like this after the year we just had.

 So why give something up? Why even bother? Why, when everything has been so hard, do we purposefully step into more hard right now, when the global pandemic is not even over yet?

 I think it is because Lent is never about what we can do and achieve but it is about recognizing what we can’t control. It is about noticing our desperate need to be saved and that we have a Saviour.

 We practice Lent because we need to remind and train ourselves how to trust God when everything around us is falling out of place. And just because things have been hard and uncertain since last Lent, it does not mean that we should ignore the hard things. Instead, we need to examine how we’ve dealt with them and put our focus back onto the one who redeems and restores and renews and rescues us from hard things.

 So enter into Lent by noticing what you have been using to ‘save’ yourself during this past year. What have you been indulging in or abusing or leaning on to comfort you when you were lonely instead of Jesus? What would happen if you removed those things from your life? What did you attempt to assert more control over when the rest of the world felt like it was spinning out of control? What would happen if you let go of that thing you’re controlling and put it in the hands of the one who is in control of all?

 Don’t take sugar out of your life this Lent because you want to control your figure. Remove sweets because you’ve been turning to them instead of the Lord. Don’t try a no-spend Lent because you’re trying to control your finances; stop online shopping and divert some of that saved money to charity because you’re willing to trust God with your finances. Don’t take social media off your phone because you see that how doom scrolling has affected your mental health, take a break from social media because you’re willing to let Jesus define your social status and your identity while trusting your time to him. 

 Practice finding comfort in the God of all comfort. Practice letting go of control to the Creator of the Universe. Practice leaning on the Rock of Ages. Practice trusting our Faithful and Loving God. This is why you shouldn’t forgo this Lent because this year has been hard. Enter into Lent so that you can learn to see that you have a faithful Saviour that you can rely on, even in these hard times.