Friday Five: What Are You Doing For Lent?

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Ready or not, Lent is upon us!

1. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras and/or Ash Wednesday this week? How? My family and I went to church on Ash Wednesday. I would not call it celebrate, but respectfully worshiping and acknowledging the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and acknowledging that we are all human and our time on this Earth is limited. This worship service brings my humility to the front and helps me realize how things change so quickly and knowing and believing in Jesus as my Savior and what he did to save me is so important in my life.

2. What was your most memorable Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday/Lent? One year, when I was attending Concordia College (now called Concordia University), a bunch of friends and I decided to head into Lincoln and attend worship at the University Lutheran Chapel. Well, it was the Maundy Thursday service and they portrayed the entire Last Supper and Garden of Gethsemane. And I can still hear them in the background. The portrayed Jesus being whipped and beaten and in the end you could hear a hammer being hit against a "nail" and agonizing screams from Jesus. It still just sits in my mind. Though I didn't see it, the image that was in my head was enough to send chills up and down my spine. I remember tears falling down my cheeks just thinking of that sacrifice.

3. Did you/your church/your family celebrate Lent as a child? If not, when and how did you discover it? I grew up attending all the Lenten worship services, but surprising enough, even though my father and mother were very religious and believed attending church was very important, I rarely attended the Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday services. But we were very regular in attendance on all of the other Lenten services.

I remember going to church one year. I grew up with 2 sisters and 1 brother. So there were 6 of us total. My parents had this small Volkswagen Rabbit. If you know anything about cars, know that this car was probably the smallest car on the planet. It can be compared to the Hyundai Accent in today’s time. Well, mom and dad sat in the front seats and yes, the 4 kids all managed to sit in the back seat. Well, one year, we were running late and it was in the spring. So, before my dad could slam on the breaks, he hit a deer. Well, another church member was driving by, saw what happened and offered to take us in to church. Dad followed a little later. Surprising, there were only a few scratches on the car, but the deer didn’t make it. We nicknamed the accident, “Thumper killed Bambi.”

4. Are you more in the give-up camp, or the take-on camp, or somewhere in between? I used to give up something each year. But found that I either couldn’t keep the promise, or had a hard time justifying my sacrifice. It just never came close to anything I could relate to Jesus doing for me. So, I try and pray more for understanding. I try and read more out of the Bible and devotions. And I try to have more patience, understanding, and love towards other people and carry that after the Lenten season is over.

5. How do you plan to keep Lent this year?

I hope to get into a devotion I picked up at church this year. Each year, I try and understand a bit more of my faith and try to question things more to fully understand it later. I will continue to attend worships with my family and be excited to celebrate Easter coming and thinking about that glorious day that Jesus no longer suffered for my sin and rose from the dead.