If you are anything like I have been most of my life, you had no idea what Lent is, except for maybe something in your belly button. Perhaps you have more than the vague awareness of Easter and a familiarity with what this day means, but for me, it was simply one of the two days a year that my family might feel mystically compelled to go to church. As such, it's been really important for me since my investigation of this Christianity thing began to try to understand rightly what this season and day commemorate and what powerful implications they have in the present.

So for some years now the church I attend has been observing the season of Lent. I learned quickly that Lent is the season in the liturgical calendar that at once recalls Jesus' 40 days of being tempted in the wilderness and also prepares the hearts of believers for the day of Jesus' resurrection at Easter. Lent is a time for praying, fasting, and repenting; a time for sharing in the suffering of Christ before sharing in the newness of life that burst into the world upon his death and resurrection.

That all sounds well and good, but what does it mean? I think for a lot of people, Lent means a time of giving something up out of some dutiful responsibility without thinking twice about why. I've heard Christians and non-Christians alike talk about giving up drinking or giving up weed or giving up coffee for 40 days, but only out of curiosity to see if they can or out of vain obligation. They do it to challenge themselves or to better themselves, which, although these can be good things, are not what Lent is ultimately about. Giving up M&Ms for 40 days while never thinking about the Lord doesn't change anything, it merely proves that you can do it (or not, depending upon your success or failure). Now I am not saying that this is intrinsically wrong, but for the Christian believer, it is not what God intends fasting or the season of Lent for.

Lent is the time when we are confronted with our own sinfulness, when we look our sin in the face and come to God asking for forgiveness so that we may draw closer to Him and share in the mission that He began over 2000 years ago. I've been doing it for years with varying degrees of success, and I still don't have it perfect, but I've learned that Lent is not a time for giving up bad habits or sins; that should be something we're doing year round. That's why a few years ago when I "gave up alcohol" for Lent but I was really trying to give up drunkenness, I didn't achieve much.

Instead, Lent is about giving up GOOD things as an act of the will to participate in the ways Jesus went without, to engage actively in the suffering of Christ. Jesus tells us that, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." That's just what Lenten fasting does; it's a tangible way in which we say no to ourselves and yes to Jesus, bearing the weight of our sinfulness and walking after him. It is not meant to be a way to punish ourselves for our sin, but a way to remind ourselves of the places where we don't yet fully reflect God's glorious image and to take practical steps to draw closer to Him and closer to bearing that reflection in the world.

This ties in closely to the mystery and the power of Easter. With Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection the entire world changed forever. Not only did he bear our sin and shame upon the cross, but he traveled through death and out the other side to a new, radically transformed, bodily life. He is the first to go through this miraculous journey, but by no means the last. His resurrection powerfully linked heaven and Earth together forever. With his resurrection, the kingdom of God began to shine in a brand new way into a dark world through a window that will continue to get larger and larger until all creation sparkles in that light.

In the book of Romans, Paul tells us that, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." God's good creation (everything He has made, our world, and us in it) was marred by sin but with Jesus' rising from the grave, God began the work of recreating everything that has been hurt by the power of sin and death. God says in Isaiah, "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." The hope of this new life, this new creation where God's space (heaven) and ours (Earth) are forever joined together which began so long ago with Jesus Christ, should live in the heart of every believer.

Again in Romans we are told that not only heaven and Earth, but we ourselves shall be transformed in just such a way. "And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us." God does not want to scrap His good creation because it has been wounded and broken, but He wants to take what He has made and redeem it. The hurt and pain we feel in this life because of sin, He is in the process of burning away and transforming us just the way He did His very own Son. For as Christians, we share in the sonship of Jesus himself.

This, then, is what Easter points to. We share in the suffering of Christ now to share in the joy and newness of life that comes with his resurrection. Those who believe in Christ for salvation already have a seed of this new bodily life within them where heaven and Earth are linked and God's glory shines brightly on all. Conversion and baptism are the outward (or inward, depending upon how you look at it) symbols of Christ's Spirit coming to dwell within us and the beginning of God's redemptive work in us that will be complete when Jesus returns and all of creation, and us with it, is transformed and resurrected as Christ himself was.

So we observe Lent. And we rejoice at the work that began on Easter. And we celebrate God's mission to redeem and resurrect His good creation with Christ at the helm, triumphing over sin and death and decay and evil for all eternity. We invite Jesus' Spirit in to begin transforming us now into the people we shall be when the kingdom of God comes on Earth as it is in heaven. We intentionally build for the kingdom of God in the present by loving each other, by taking care of the planet God put man as steward over, by forgiving others, by producing art that reflects God's beauty and truth, by advocating for justice for those with no voice, by feeding the hungry and helping the poor. Because we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. God began a redemptive work on that cross and with Jesus' resurrection that changed the world forever. And we groan and wait and share in Christ's suffering now, that we may see resurrection life shock and change us and all creation some day. And it begins here and now.