Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, and is a moveable season. Its exact date is tied to Easter, the date of which depends on the equinox and the ancient calculations of lunar months. This is confusing in a world in which the remembrance of Presidential birthdays is set to a fixed Monday in February to accommodate our love of three day weekends. We always know when President's Day is but we are not so sure about Lent.
The use of Lent has changed over the years. It has been a time of training for baptism, a time for penitence, a time for denial, and a time for spiritual growth. Many people will say that you can't really appreciate Easter without revisiting our humanity and our need for redemption. The length of the season has developed as well. It went from forty hours to a week to forty days to forty days plus Sundays. The reason it is not forty days before Easter is because every Sunday is considered to be a day for celebrating Easter. Therefore, Sundays are excluded when counting backwards from Easter.
For years, many churches that grew up in North America have ignored Lent. It seemed too arcane, too medieval, just too churchy to be relevant. But in recent years, many of these church groups have begun to see the value of some form of reflection before Easter. They may not quite admit that there is a Lent, but they seem to be giving a nod to it. There have been "national days of prayer and fasting", and Forty Days of Purpose to name a couple. I believed that people will benefit from these activities.
We all have a need to spend some time reflecting on our lives and our relationship with God. In addition to participating in our Sunday and Wednesday activities, I invite you to set aside some time each day during Lent to read your Bible, to pray, and to develop your relationship with God.