New Years Resolutions – Lenten Repentance

Pastoral Letter from Carrie
Wiles Hill Witness
January-March edition

I always find it strange when the season of Lent follows so closely on the heels of Christmastime. Lent begins quite early this year with Ash Wednesday on February 6 (yes, even before Valentine’s Day!). The last time the seasons came so closely together Torin and I were in a Disciples of Christ church during our ministry formation. I found the quick transition jolting: down with the winter evergreen on one Sunday and up with the purple of Lenten altar clothes the next. Like forcing a tulip in a hothouse, it felt like the season that is “suppose” to be in spring was being pushed on us a little too early—in the “bleak midwinter” comes the reflective responsibilities of accompanying Christ to the cross.

But maybe there is a benefit to the early arrival. Around the beginning of February I find my New Year’s resolutions that I so “resolutely” made begin to wane a little. I find it an opportune time, then, to think about what I’m going to “give up” for Lent. If my eating habits that I was going to improve fall by the wayside, I can use Lent as a tonic, and give up chocolate. If I was going to be “slower to anger” and “quicker to love,” but find myself falling into irritability, I can use Lent to give up a responsibility that gives me anxiety. Yes, Lent can be the redeemer of all New Years resolutions gone bad.

But if I’m honest with myself, I know that a “new beginning” isn’t what I need to help me change what needs to be tended. Lent isn’t simply a pick me up, like an artificial stimulus to a groaning economy. Lent is a time of reflection and repentance, of “looking” and “turning.” It’s a time to throw open the doors and windows of our hearts and sweep clean the corners and cobwebs of our soul. Resolutions look at what we want to be and creates plans to get us there. Repentance means acknowledging what we are, and asks God to transform us in spite of ourselves. Resolutions bring guilt. Repentance brings hope.

As we enter into the season of Lent, may we stand as we are, and invite God to transform us—without guilt and shame of how we fail, but with faith and confidence in the power to be renewed.

Carrie