2016 Belmont University Lenten GuideSample

By the time Lent comes around, I’ve already broken my New Year’s resolution one or two or ten times. I have the best of intentions, whether it’s a resolution to write every day, run every day or cut down on my caffeine consumption—but I can’t seem to stick with any of these things for more than a week at a time. So by the second month of the brand new shiny year, I’m feeling dull and defeated. I want to forget that first month or so of trying and failing. I tend to treat Lent like a second chance at a New Year’s resolution, a clean slate.

Sacred time is different from secular time, however, and that’s not how this season works. Lent (somewhat inconveniently!) invites us not to forget but to remember. I would prefer to sweep my mistakes under the rug, pretending they never happened. We do this collectively as well. Our histories—familial, communal, national—are all a mixed bag of triumph and failure, and, at least on the national scale, justice and oppression. But we tend to be much better at loudly trumpeting the things we did well than we are at acknowledging the times we did not live up to our ideals.

The people of Israel mark a momentous occasion in Joshua 4 after they cross the Jordan River. It hasn’t been a perfect journey. Fear, disobedience and death linger in their memory. I’m sure there are things they would prefer to forget. Yet they are instructed to remember. In the midst of their fear, they have been delivered, and that’s worth recalling and recounting to future generations.

I’m not suggesting we all erect stone monuments for every part of our past. But during this season of Lent we are encouraged to remember and repent: to name our fears and our failures, out loud, or risk “wasting away” in our self-suppressing silence (Psalm 32:3). These confessions require courage. Fortunately, we are made to be people who “do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Let’s intentionally remember both our glorious victories and our humiliating defeats, not so we can dwell for too long in either place (for neither one defines us) but so we can remember where we came from and better orient ourselves to the future. Failure breeds learning—of our own limitations, as well as of our own God-given resilience and resourcefulness in the face of them. Maya Angelou wisely reminded us that all we can do is the best with what we know, but that “when we know better, we do better.” We can courageously face our past, learn from it, and know that grace, forgiveness, and love are ours.

BETH RITTER-CONN
Lecturer
College of Theology & Christian Ministry, Honors