Recently a priest I know said something in passing about "Lent surely being everyone's least favorite season." I hope she's not right. It's certainly not the case for me.

There is nothing to compare with the moment when we kneel in humble silence on Ash Wednesday, our foreheads newly adorned with a symbol of our mortality. There is nothing quite like the first time we enter the church each Lent and look up at the veiled triptych and altar. There is no other time of year when we are invited to be so utterly honest about the hold of sin in our lives, ask God to create in us clean hearts, and take up disciplines that have the power to shape us for holiness.

The words of Psalm 32, which we'll recite this weekend, perfectly capture my feelings about Lent. Here is how Eugene Peterson translates it:

Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be—
you get a fresh start,
your slate's wiped clean.
Count yourself lucky—
God holds nothing against you
and you're holding nothing back from him.
When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.
Then I let it all out;
I said, "I'll come clean about my failures to God."
Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.
These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray;
when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts
we'll be on high ground, untouched.
Let me give you some good advice;
I'm looking you in the eye
and giving it to you straight:
"Don't be ornery like a horse or mule
that needs bit and bridle
to stay on track."
God-defiers are always in trouble;
God-affirmers find themselves loved
every time they turn around.

In his lovely little Lenten devotional, the great Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, "I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be."[1]

This weekend we will pray the beautifully exhaustive petitions of the Great Litany, hear the story of Jesus' sojourn in the wilderness, and begin our season-long exploration of Biblical theology with The Saint John's Bible. Our hope this season is to foster self-reflection, repentance, and renewal. We will seek to take up the graces of Lent, for there is so much blessing in these 40 holy days.

So, I hope you won't listen to those who try to tell you that Lent's a downer. For those who are willing, it is just what we need.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent (Westminster John Knox, 2017).