Lent: A Season to Return

Lent has a reputation as the season you give up chocolate. But underneath the fasting is something far richer: a set-apart time to return to God with a whole heart.

What Lent is

Lent is the roughly forty-day stretch leading up to Easter (not counting Sundays), echoing the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. For centuries Christians have used it to prepare for Easter through reflection, repentance, and simplicity — clearing away distractions to focus on Christ and his cross.

Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments.

Joel 2:12-13

The three old practices

Traditionally, Lent has leaned on three practices Jesus himself taught about in the Sermon on the Mount:

• Prayer — more time, more honesty, more listening.
• Fasting — giving something up not as a diet or a rule, but to feel your hunger and turn it toward God.
• Giving — using what you save or free up to love your neighbor.

The point of giving something up is never the thing itself. It's the space it opens. Every time you reach for what you've set aside and remember why, it becomes a small prompt to pray.

Keeping it without legalism

Lent can curdle into a performance — a way to prove something to God or ourselves. It isn't that. You can't earn what Jesus already bought. Lent is simply a season to notice where your heart has wandered and to walk it home.

If you want to keep Lent this year, pick one small, sustainable practice. Add a daily reading of the Gospels. Or set aside one habit — a screen, a snack, an hour — and give that time to prayer. Keep it simple enough to actually do.