So it’s that time of year again. Lent. I’m sure you will have already been part of or overheard conversations saying things like ’so what are you giving up for lent?’ ‘Oh man it’s time to give up chocolate again’ or ‘It’s about time i lost some weight’.

Sometimes i wonder what the point of lent is. I hear things like this, and a lot of them make me think, have we completely lost the true meaning of what lent is about?

Lent obviously originates from the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the desert, in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil. 40 days of hell really.

Yet lent for us seems to have become a ‘Holy new years resolution’ often self righteous attempts to impress ourselves or others. We give up chocolate, because we need to lose weight, hang on a minute I don’t read anywhere in the Bible… ‘Jesus went into the desert to be tested by the devil, and to concentrate on his weight watchers programme’ Or we give up alcohol or Cigarettes because we want to save money! Wait i think i’ve found this on Bible gateway… ‘Jesus went into the wilderness to save some money, so then he can keep it and spend it on other idols like food or clothes.’

Now obviously these are sweeping statements and God can really move through our sacrifice of these things over lent. But too often our motives are wrong. We do things for our own good, or because we think it will be worth it. But in actual fact lent should be the time we really suffer for God. If chocolate is our problem, then maybe we shouldn’t give it up for 40 days, but maybe we should challenge ourselves to eat 20 chocolate bars a day for 40 days, that is more like suffering! But we don’t do that, because we might get ill, or we might put on weight, and we don’t fancy that.

Lent isn’t about creating rules for yourself and sticking to them, for example ‘I will not watch TV’… ‘Apart from 7-9pm on Monday, 6-8pm Wednesday, 7-10pm Saturday and 1-3pm Sunday.’ Because already there we have given into the temptation without even starting! If we really want to give something up for lent, then we need to give something up that we really cannot live without right now. Give up your computer, or your phone. Give up Coffee. If you try to think of reasons why you shouldn’t give that up because you need it or don’t think you can manage without it, then you have probably found what you need to give up.

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