Resources for “Keeping a Holy Lent”

Each year, as we kick off this liturgical season, we are invited to "keep a holy Lent," but often we have no idea what that means! Lent is a season of preparation and repentance - preparing for the great Resurrection Celebration of Easter by remembering and repenting of the ways we are separated from the Lord. Historically Christians have taken part in this season with spiritual disciplines including fasting, intentional prayer and Scripture reading, and almsgiving. These practices don't make us more holy, better followers of Jesus, but rather they highlight the distance God has traveled to rescue us from sin, death, and evil. You may have your own Lenten resources to follow, but if you are looking for some, here are a few that we recommend:
 

• Good Samaritan Lent Family Devotion Guide

  • “Over the next seven weeks, we’d like to invite you to spend some time together in Scripture and discussing what you have read as a family. Our goal is to help your family see how God’s faithfulness, love, grace, and redemption is woven throughout Scripture. These videos will give your family an overview of different topics, themes, and passages in Scripture.”

• Reflections from the Matthew 25 Initiative (a ministry of the Anglican Church in North America)

  • From their website: “This Lent, we invite you to join us on a journey of normalizing Anglican Justice and Mercy by thoughtfully engaging the historic Christian season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The focus on almsgiving is not only that of giving from our resources, as the Church has done throughout her history. Almsgiving is also a giving of our lives. What does it look like to extend mercy to our neighbors, especially those living in poverty whom we might miss around us every day? And, as Jesus was asked in Luke 10, who is our neighbor? Do we know the answer to “who?” Over the coming forty days of Lent, we will take our cue from the Good Samaritan who both saw a shared kinship in the vulnerable man and stopped traveling the path he was on in order to show the injured mercy. It begins with being able to see and understand, which is what we will be doing together: see, stop, show.

• The Lent Project from Biola University

  • From their website: “In the next fifty-three days of the Lent Project, we will focus on the Gospel of John. We will read John’s entire eyewitness account. We will learn about the “Book of Signs,” where John describes 7 amazing miracles, including feeding the 5000, walking on water, and giving sight to a blind man…In addition to reading The Gospel of John, we will also incorporate poetry, visual art, and music. It is our prayer that all of these elements will work together to magnify the Lord and bring you closer to him—to bring you “life”—during this season.”

• The Way Down is the Way Up from The Common Rule

  • From the pdf guide: “…in order to understand the wild miracle of the resurrection of Jesus, we have to first journey into the deep curse of death. Over and over, this is the trajectory of the Christian life. We go down to go up. This is also the journey of Lent.

    Consider this devotional a guide to that journey.

    Over the next six weeks, we will walk the journey down to death. But we will do this alongside Jesus, who walked this road before us. Jesus went down to defeat the enemy of death so that our journey might end upwards in the victory of resurrection. Following Him means we learn that down-up motion. And Lent is a time to practice it. Let’s begin.”