What's Lent to Us
by Jack Kubinec
When I was in fourth grade, my mother asked me what I was giving up for Lent. With as much piety as my 10-year-old self could muster, I told her I was taking a fast from vegetables. While I don’t entirely remember if this resolution was carried through or not, I think this fast can help us think about our Lenten practices today. Does it matter what we give up? Or, is Lent simply about the act of giving up?
In the Christian church, many believers observe a 40 day period of fasting known as Lent during the six weeks before Easter. The tradition of Lent dates back to the 300s CE, and it mirrors Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness before beginning His earthly ministry. [1] At Lent’s inception, Christians would eat one meal a day, typically in the evening, and refrain from eating certain foods for the entire Lenten season. In modern times, Lent has come to involve fasting from a variety of specific pleasures, like sweets, social media, television, or, in my 10-year-old case, vegetables.
Today marks the first day of Lent, and many Christians are faced with the task of determining which practices to adopt or restrict. If you’re anything like me, you tend to view Lent as a Christian New Year: a time to make a resolution and form new habits that will improve your life. But, there’s an issue when we think that way. In the Christian view, the things we have are not ours to give up, and the sacrifice we mirror was not one made for personal betterment.
When the focus of Lent becomes simply “giving something up,” we fall into the poor assumption that we are entirely in control of our lives and the things in it. In 1 Peter, a letter in the New Testament, the apostle Peter argues that humans should be “faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” [2] That is to say, we are not in possession of God’s grace—it has been “lent” to us. Crucially, though, God’s grace takes various forms. God’s grace gives us salvation, but it also gives us families and laughter and RPCC brunch. If God’s grace is manifested for us in various blessings and we are stewards of those blessings, then how should we respond to these blessings?
The answer is twofold: we as Christians should feel a great degree of humility at our blessings, and this humility should lead us to give freely from our blessings. Feeling pride in our possessions stems from the feeling that what we have is uniquely ours. If I save up my own money to buy a Canada Goose jacket and AirPods, then I believe that I am entitled to those material goods because of the hard work I did to pay for them. But, as Christians, we believe that all blessings are gifts freely given from God’s grace. This lack of ownership may sound punitive, but, in reality, it is greatly liberating. When your identity is separate from your possessions, then losing your possessions doesn’t constitute a loss of who you are. If you see your status as an AirPod owner as something that you can uniquely possess, then you are a failure if you misplace your easily-losable charging case. However, when you see your possessions as given uniquely from God, then your attachment to Him begins to supersede your attachment to the gifts in your life.
So, what should we do with the knowledge that the blessings we have come from God instead of from ourselves? We should gladly give up our blessings so that we can be more greatly in awe of their giver. The more generous our sacrifice, the more we can identify the true object of our affections: God. When Jesus died for us on the cross, He established the fact that sacrifice is the ultimate act of love.
For this Lenten season, consider giving up one of God’s blessings that you really depend on. Consider giving something up even though you would receive no tangible benefit from doing so. Know that this sacrifice won’t make you an inherently more sanctified person, but believe that our blessings can only really be enjoyed when understood as the gracious gifts of a far greater God.