In the past, both within the Church and beyond the Church, if people have thought about Lent at all they have probably thought about it as the time before Easter when you give something up, like chocolate.
In view of the alarming information now emerging about international chocolate manufacturing, where so often children are used in slave labour to harvest cocoa beans, assessing chocolate consumption and seeking out fair trade chocolate options is an important thing to do. However, choosing to limit or change chocolate consumption does not go to the heart of what Lent is about, or what the time of Lent offers us all.
It is a curious, delightful thing that just as our calendar flows from one month to another, interspersed with cultural dates like the labour day weekend and the footy finals, the Christian calendar flows parallel to this with its ancient holy days which continue to speak to us- inviting us to enter into the mystery of who we really are and who the Divine is.
Lent is one such holy period in the Christian calendar. The time of purple: the sacred time which offers us space to consider our journey and our vocation.
In the tradition of the early church, these 40 days before Easter (excluding Sundays) were the serious space for those preparing to be baptised, to think about and prepare for what they were about to embark on, in this life long journey of following in the way of Jesus.
Now, in the Christian calendar this invitation comes to each of us yearly in Lent. The invitation is to take time, to reflect on our journey, to listen for the movement of the sacred, to think about where we are blocking the energy of Divine. To pause to consider where we might be letting fear corrode love, worry suffocate wonder, or resentment freeze over the possibility of healing, and to have the courage to let these things go.
To surrender these blockages to the Divine, so that, slowly, slowly, we can be freed- unencumbered- and thus enabled to enter more deeply the way of the Divine- who in Christian faith we believe comes to us in Jesus- loving us to death and who in doing so breathes newness of life.
In this season of Lent you may want to take up the invitation of this sacred space, not to simply give up some type of food, but to think about what is blocking the flow of love in your life. You may wish to journal about these things, or discuss this with trusted others, you might choose to explore this in worship or in a Lenten study. In whatever way you choose, you may dare to take these things to the Divine- the Ground of our Being- who yearns that all discover wholeness and healing, freedom and homecoming and who wants to enable us in the journey there.
Sally Douglas
Please note there will be no worship in the Highlands Cluster on Sunday February 17.
On Sunday February 24 Cluster worship will be held at Daylesford Uniting Church at 10:30am.Â
