Simple rejuvenation during Lent

Lent is a season of prayer, spiritual discipline and growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. The word “Lent” comes from the Germanic word for springtime and can be seen as spiritual spring cleaning.

It is a time to take a spiritual inventory, cleaning out those things which hinder our personal relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to him in his Body, the Church. The whole season of Lent and its disciplines can transform us, body, soul, and spirit. Disciplined lives cleanse the body and provide for a simple spiritual journey, that brings us into a closer walk with God. Thus, our emotions can get rid of obsessions, fear, sadness, depression, and emotional pain.

This happens when we focus on becoming more and more like Christ. Athanasius, an early church father, appropriately described this season as "becoming by grace, what God is by nature."

There are very basic Christian tasks associated with the season of Lent. These are almsgiving, prayer and contemplating the suffering and victory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When we consider the bodily and emotional suffering of Jesus and his torment when he carried all our sins and was punished for all our iniquities, even forsaken by God his Father, we find his light in the Father’s love, who gave his only Son for us – and we find the love of Jesus to be strangely familiar, as of a friend who gives his life for us. There is no greater love, than to give your life for your friends.

The purpose of Lent is to find assurance of faith once again, by the grace of God. The wealth of spiritual renewal that comes through grateful sacrifices, renews my understanding of the love of God and of being his child.

Within the simplicity of Lent, a renewed relationship with Jesus comes to pass. I am redirected onto the way of God’s purpose for me to only live for his glory. And by grace, through faith, the Word of God rejuvenates my servant’s heart through grateful love for what Jesus my Lord and Saviour did for me!

At the end the Lenten season comes a conclusion associated with wonderful joy and happiness - with the feast that rejoices in the victory of Christ over my enemies – the Resurrection Sunday! (Often called Easter Sunday.)

And this joy continues at least every Sunday for the rest of my life, when I worship and praise, and learn to walk with the risen, conquering Lord every day, until the end.