Lent: An in-between Time

I once heard Garrison Keillor, host of the radio program, “A Prairie Home Companion”, quip that God had made the month of March for people who don’t drink so they would understand what hangovers are all about. March is a pretty drab month. It’s not quite winter and not quite spring. Many days in March are overcast. Yards look like sodden messes with broken sticks, brown grass and leaves that escaped the rake the pervious Fall.
Author Thalassa Cruso wrote of the month of March, "March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
March to me has always seemed like an in-between time; much like the month of November. November isn’t quite Fall and not quite Winter. Likewise, March is not quite Winter and not quite Spring. That’s what makes this month so very maddening for me. There is a hint of new life to come in Spring and yet Winter isn’t quite over. March certainly is an in-between time.
How very fitting that the most of the season of Lent falls in the month of March this year; Lent is something of an in-between time in the life of the church. The church has just completed the celebration of Jesus’ birth during the Christmas season and pondered Jesus’ identity during the days of the Epiphany season. (Epiphany is that season where the identity of Jesus is made manifest to us.) Lent bridges that time of having learned who Jesus is, during the season of Epiphany, with that time of watching Jesus suffer, die and rise during the Great and Holy Week and Easter.
Lent is a bridge from the birth and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to the work of salvation that he has come to do on our behalf and for the sake of the whole world.
How fitting then that Lent this year mostly falls in a month whose character is the bridging of the seasons. This year we will celebrate Easter towards the middle part of April when nature will have fully awakened from her long winter slumber.
It’s in March that we start to see the first slight stirrings of the return of life. Daffodils will begin to break through the surface of the earth this month. Even now sap is running in trees that have been sleeping through the winter months (as anyone with allergies can tell you). Green buds will appear on trees towards the end of the month. Birds that have been long absent from our feeders will begin to reappear.
One has the sense during March of an old order or an old condition beginning to pass away.
As we move through the days of Lent and reflect on them I think we can become aware of an old order passing away, as well. As we follow our Lord Jesus to the cross during these days, during this in-between time of Lent, we are aware that the old order of sin and death is passing away and being replaced with the glory of Jesus Christ. As the days lengthen, as the buds appear during March, as Lent progresses we become aware of the changes that God is bringing in not just the natural world, but also, in our lives in Jesus Christ.
Lent is our in-between time then. It is a time to move from one reality to another. It is a time to consider all the changes that God through Christ is even now bringing into the world.

Dipping My Toe Into the Water

Welcome to my blog. This will be a place for me to share with others my thoughts and musings concerning the Christian Faith and Theology. In this blog I hope I will be able to share my passion for Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am a man of varied interests. A major interest of mine is the way in which I feel God prepares us to hear His story as we read literature and as we watch movies. I am a firm believer that God inspires people in spite of themselves to tell portions of His story in literature and other media.

I recall C.S. Lewis being of the same mind. Lewis felt that in myths and fables God had indeed placed aspects of the story that He was going to present to the world in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. I conjure in this view also.

I hope that you will enjoy what I write and will feel free to comment!