Three Ways to Go Deeper in Lent
What is Lent?
Lent is the forty-day season in our church calendar in which we journey with Jesus to the cross and prepare for the heartbreak and hope of Holy Week and Easter. The word Lent comes from an Old English word for lengthen, referring to the gradually lengthening days that we experience this time of year. Over centuries, Lent evolved into this period of preparation over forty days which is a number that has significance in scripture — from the number of days it rained in the story of Noah’s ark to how many years Israel wandered in the wilderness to how many days Jesus found himself in the wilderness following his baptism and before the start of his public ministry.
We need Lent. It has a way of marking time, giving us pause. If given its due, it can reorient us. I like to think of Lent as a sort of spring cleaning for our souls — the season in which we clean out the junk drawers of our hearts, run the steamer vac over our rhythms of life, and “home edit” our priorities so that we might breathe again. Find life again. Turn again toward love.
Three Ways to Go Deeper
To guide us in this work, we’re introducing a series called Seeking: Honest Questions for Deeper Faith. It’s from the brilliant creatives at A Sanctified Art, and each week centers on a different honest question rooted in scripture that has the power and potential to crack us open, change our direction, move us closer to the heart of God, and deepen our faith. You can read more about the series below, but there are a few intentional ways we’re inviting you to take part in the spiritual practice of seeking.
1. Daily: TLC+ Devotional
This is what our online community was made for! In the Lent 2023: Seeking space on TLC+, we’ll post a daily devotional featuring a different question and prayer to guide your reflection and deepen your faith. Each day's devotional will connect with the theme for that week. Join the Seeking space here.
2. Weekly: Next Step Practice
You’ve told us that you’re digging the weekly Next Step practices, so we’re going to continue them throughout the Lenten season. Each Sunday, we’ll share one practice you can do during the week to help you take the next step in your own seeking. Each practice comes with a Monday prompt, midweek encouragement, and space for reflection at the end of the week. To get started, text next to 984–214–8852.
3. Sundays: Opportunities to Creatively Respond During Liturgy
You’ve probably heard me say it a time or two: We’re not consumers of worship; we’re participants. So each week in this series, we’ll offer tangible opportunities during worship that will put you in the middle of the stories you hear and help the questions come alive for you. Each week’s creative opportunity will build upon the last, ultimately becoming a beautiful symbol of resurrection on Easter Sunday. Plus, our Local Kids will engage with the series in their own way during their spiritual formation time. We'll share more this Sunday.
If you want to learn more about the series, read on! We can’t wait to join you in the seeking this Lent.
About the Series
This year, the scripture passages for each Sunday in Lent feature stories of Jesus encountering all kinds of people who are seeking: Nicodemus comes to him in the veil of night. Jesus approaches a Samaritan woman at a well. He heals a man born without sight. In these stories, each person is seeking a new beginning, a different life, a deeper faith. And what unfolds out of the seeking are exchanges filled with questions and exploration. Often, an unveiling occurs as assumptions are disrupted, new perspectives are revealed, and mystery grows.
Like the characters in our Lenten scriptures, we are also seeking many things: clarity, connection, wonder, justice, balance. We are seeking our calling, the sacred, and how to live as a follower of Jesus. And with the turbulence of the past few years, many of us are asking big questions about our lives and our faith. We hope this series will help us unpack some of those big questions in ways that are honest and faithful. Throughout this season, we hope you will continually ask yourself: What am I seeking? What is God seeking?
So this Lent, we invite you to engage in the spiritual practice of seeking. We encourage you to stay curious, open, and nimble. We hope you will soften your assumptions and expand your perspectives. We pray that these questions will create a safe space to explore—to be drawn more deeply into the fullness of life, into the heart of God.
