Every year, the King family makes a cinematic pilgrimage through The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As we journey to Mordor and back to the Shire, our minds and hearts are freshly captivated. Afterwards, I find that I cherish simple joys like a hobbit in the Shire.
I find myself more aware of sinister things that steal beauty and hope, the way the “One Ring” pulls on Frodo. I also find that I take things in a bit more slowly so that I can savor them more. For a time, it’s as if I am wearing a lens as I experience my days.
This coming (Ash) Wednesday, we will tell another story together as we enter into the season of Lent. We will hear the words “you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” punctuated with a cross of ashes placed on our foreheads. These actions tell the story of our mortality and our resurrection hope. Lent is a 40-day story (excluding Sundays) shaping the way we move into the world and into our faith.
The church gives us this season to prepare for Easter, reflecting on our ever-present need to repent. Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley describes this in his book — Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — as “cast[ing] off those things that so easily entangle us” in our relationship with Jesus.
Allow me to invite you into a Lenten tradition: choosing a fast.
Fasting stokes our heart’s hunger for God through a temporary restriction, allowing ourselves to experience a slight physical or emotional hunger. In a season like these next 40 days, we are invited to consider refraining from any of the particular things that we feel “entangle us.” For my fasts, I have refrained from things like social media, alcohol, podcasts, keeping up with sports news, sugar, and single-use plastics(!) These are things that I have felt, like the One Ring, had an inordinate hold on me in a particular moment.
So I will leave you with a diagnostic question: What entangles your heart as you seek to love Jesus more and more?
Michael+