The Builder and The Architect

Is it ok to get excited about Lent? I mean, it’s supposed to be a season of reflection and preparation, prayer and fasting, deep examination and repentance. Am I even allowed to smile? So why am I excited? I’m not giddy, jumping up and down excited, but I can feel somewhere in my brain or heart an excitement for this season. Not excitement over sin or any feeling like I will magically be cured of all of my sinful habits. But perhaps excitement for this concentrated time of discipline, or the fact that it is something the church participates in as a family, or the fact that it has been part of my life for so long now that having the same thing reoccur in my life every year is comforting. Maybe it comes from all of those places, maybe none, but I am ok with it.

Things that happen on a yearly basis do given an interesting perspective on things. The yearly perspective. Last year I came to Atlanta for the Ash Wednesday service at Trinity as a visitor. I was very encouraged. Earlier that day I sat at the Starbucks on Howell Mill (when my Psalm reading for the day just happened to be Psalm 51), with no idea that the next year I would be sitting there again, but this time as a citizen of the city, not just a visitor. How things have changed in just a year! It is exciting not to know what things will occur between this year and the next Ash Wednesday.

Observing Lent is not biblically obligatory, but I believe Continue reading