Lent is a season for shining light in dark corners.
Fasting, we come face to face with what we were turning to, even when we did not know it, in order to fill our hollows, to salve our pains, to dull our aches, to hide our loneliness, to mask our shame, to deny our guilt. 
Stripped of our favorite crutch, we come face to face with ourselves–and our surprising need for a savior.
Turning outward, many of us come face to face with the need of the world around us–the darkness that is too insidious to be contained within the human heart. We turn in this season away from ourselves and see the hunger, the poverty, the death, the power that enslaves people and communities and cities and nations.
But Lent isn’t simply about moving out the furniture to expose these dark corners, it’s about shining the light upon them. It’s about shining the light of the world upon them.
Abraham Kuyper famously said about this world, “There is not one square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘It is mine.’” Lent dares us to believe afresh that this is so.
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The Son is the image of the invisible God,
the one who is first over all creation,
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Because all things were created by him:
both in the heavens and on the earth,
the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.
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Whether they are thrones or powers,
or rulers or authorities,
all things were created through him and for him.
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He existed before all things,
and all things are held together in him.
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He is the head of the body, the church,
who is the beginning,
the one who is firstborn from among the dead
so that he might occupy the first place in everything.
- Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,
and he reconciled all things to himself through him—
whether things on earth or in the heavens.
He brought peace through the blood of his cross.
Lent dares us afresh to believe this–to discover afresh the full scope of the world’s rebellion against God. To see once again that the depth of creation’s waywardness plumbs the bottom of own hearts, and that the breadth of this world’s rebellion is enshrined from one end of the earth to another.
And in the very act of seeing how far the curse is found, to believe that the entirety of it has been reconciled to God through the death of his son.
Where our hearts wage war against the son who would be our all in all, turning to chocolate and Facebook and alcohol, Christ declares a peace obtained in his own self-giving love.
Where the power of hunger and abandonment and slavery hold people in their thrall, Christ declares that he is a sovereign over these Lords, come to set humanity free. 
Lent dares us to believe afresh that the gospel is good news. Lent dares us to believe afresh that there is a power at work in the cosmos for good that is capable of overcoming all the powers at work in the cosmos for evil.
Lent dares us to believe that, in fact, though only now seen to the eyes of faith, there are no dark corners. Christ’s light has shone on its all. The light of the world has come and that light is not only “the light of humanity,” it is also the resplendence of the glory of God.
The firstborn and uncreated one is also, now, he who was raised from the dead. Here is a power so strong, a light so bright, that darkness cannot withstand it. All has been reconciled to God.
This post is part of the Lenten Blog Tour. Check out the schedule here, a great devotional resource for the season leading up to Easter.
Are you extolling Lent or Christ?
Lent is at its best a good preacher, not the message. Lent does not dare us to believe in itself but in the magnitude of Christ’s salvation.
Well said! And such a great post, too! Thanks for sharing! Lenten blessings!
Lent is an observing of days and months and seasons the very ritualism the gospel delivers us from.
Indeed. I’m so free from it that I’m enslaved neither to the keeping of it (as some are) nor to the neglect of it (as are others). True freedom cuts both ways. Neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision.
Thank you for this. We come face to face with ourselves and our surprising need for a Savior–yes. One of the gifts of Lent, to stand in a quieter room with God’s grace ringing in our ears.
Daniel
I go part way with your idea of freedom. Freedom does indeed in some senses mean the ability to say yes or no, however, I am not so sure that easily applies to days, seasons etc.
a) You speak of lent as such a spiritual virtue that it is hard to see how it can be optional.
b)Paul forbids getting worked up over believers who have a weak conscience about special days, foods etc in Romans. However, nevertheless considers the ‘strong conscience’ the proper conscience. In Galatians and Colossians he goes much further seeing such practices as ‘weak and beggarly elements’
There is something very Judaistic about Christian calendars; they so easily substitute ritual for relationship… one reason why Christianity is so sparing in religious paraphenalia. No?
It seems to me that being “strong” has to do with the freedom to do or not do without fear that one is breaking the commandments of God. Sure, for Jews in the first century the ‘not doing’ was the thing they feared–could one still please God without doing days and months and the like?
It sounds to me like you’re in the opposite space: not sure that you could practice observance of a day without committing some sort of idolatry or other failure to honor Christ appropriately. If you’re not free to practice, fine, you’re weak in conscience. I can respect that. But you should know that you’re free to do or not do, and that God can be honored in either.
Daniel
I enjoy discussing some of these issues with you… but… come on… you’re not really saying that Paul is simply fighting for the freedom to observe days or not observe days, to eat meat or not to eat meat. He is fighting for this of course… for this ‘at least’. But he is arguing for much more.
He is arguing… surely… that this days.seasons,foods approach to faith belongs to spiritual immaturity. He is not looking for believers simply creating a ‘christianized’version of a Juaistic liturgical calendar, but seeking to bring them to see the whole approach is sub-Christian. He wants to deliver them from a religion of rituals, rules, and mere aesthetics into the full liberty of mature sonship where the ‘inferior’ things are left behind.
In Colossians it is not simply that some are insisting on these things that he disapproves but that the things themselves are ‘ … elemental spirits of the world… and… are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.’. To such they have ‘died’. Col 2.
John,
I see that your comment was addressed to Daniel so pardon my interruption but are you saying that rituals, rules and aesthetics are worthless to the Christian faith because they are inferior? (that is an honest question, I really want to make sure I am understanding your point accurately)
Where I get really hung up on this idea is communion. From my perspective communion is a ritual that Christ instituted and that it is (to use Daniel’s words) “at its best a good preacher, not the message”. Obviously communion can cause all sorts of disagreements, confusion and just plain weird practices but just because we can screw it up, does that mean it is worthless in terms of helping us enter into “the full liberty of mature sonship”?