Why we need Lent

Why forty?

Forty means God is up to something.

Forty is a time of testing, a time of darkness and shadows and waiting, a time of holding on tight to a God you can’t always see. Like a man sitting in the dark listening to the rain destroying his world. Like a people wandering in the desert, eating nothing but bread from the sky. Like a prophet running from his enemies and hiding alone in the cave of God. Like the Son of God facing all the rage of the enemy in the wilderness.

Forty is when God says, “Walk into the wild and wait with me. Get ready. I’m coming. I’m doing something new.”

Why the wilderness? Why the darkness? Why forty?

Maybe the wilderness is the only place he can get our attention. Maybe the darkness pulls our eyes to him. Maybe forty is how long it takes to truly hear, truly know, truly understand.

I’m not sure. I only know what I see: over and over he uses forty. Over and over he upends our lives and calls us into the wilderness. And the wilderness is where he gets us ready.

I turned forty this year. Maybe I’m just reading into the significance of the number, but I can’t help feeling that God’s getting me ready too. Lately I’ve been in a darkness that I cannot understand. Yes, some things in our life are uncertain right now. There are many unknowns. That’s part of it, but there is more to this weight on my heart. At times I feel a great yearning coming over me, a longing that is almost suffocating.

Yesterday I felt this way. I was in the middle of a weekend away with my husband. I had no reason to be sad, and yet the tears kept coming. I finally stopped and stilled my heart. “Don’t struggle,” God said. “Enter into the darkness.”

So I just started writing. I let the darkness come. And I cannot explain why, but the sorrow for our sin and lostness just overtook me, and I started crying out to God, for myself, for my family, for the broken church, and for this raging world. The longing to see him, to touch him, was so overwhelming. I could not stop the flood of words of repentance and prayer.

I think God is up to something big. I think God wants to revive his church. I think he wants to wake us up, shake us from our daydreams, and show us himself. He is calling us out of the shadowlands. He is calling us to believe him to be real in this world. He wants to set us free.

Will we go with him? Will we take those steps into the darkness?

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty days of Lent. It is a time when we can still our hearts and let God in. But seeing God calls for a surrendering.

What is he asking you to surrender? How is he calling you to stop, still, and see him?

I’m committed to pursuing God in a new way over the next forty days. I want to understand what he is up to. I want to trust him enough to step into this wilderness and believe that on the other side is the Promised Land. I’m tired of shadows. I want to be free. I want to see him use this church to heal this desperate world. I don’t know what that looks like, but I know it starts here.

What if we all stopped and fell on our faces and cried out to see God? What if we all really listened? What might he do?