Lent.

Last year Abby and I started talking about Lent. We grew up celebrating Advent at home, learning about the promises and prophecies in the Bible. And how God keeps his promises. All the time. Every time. He never forgets. And his time isn't like our time. He is patient. And Loving. He is Love. Made flesh. And he lived among us. But the most important holiday in the Christian calendar is Easter. We need to make sure we are celebrating with our families in just as specially as Advent. So we set about collecting ideas and had a lot of great conversations about what we could/would do. And then suddenly it was Ash Wednesday. We were taken by surprise because we have never celebrated it before.

Our family started celebrating a week late. We stripped down the dining room mantle. Took down pictures. We want to be reminded of Jesus. Yesterday we started by making a wooden cross. We put the Christ candle (the center candle from our Advent wreath that we light on Christmas day) with it, and light it each night as we read some of the Lenten readings from my copy of the Common Book of Prayer. We are splitting up the weekly passages into one each night. And learning a hymn. I got a great little book about Lent for kids. It has some great introductions to the different traditional practices of Lent, as well as some fun activity ideas. This week we are going to focus on Remembering. Joshua had the Isrealites set up a monument of stones as a sign of God's faithfulness and as a tool to pass on the memories of what God has done. We talked about the stones that we have in our living room and where they came from.

Just like a stone can be a reminder of someone/something, we are starting to collect meaningful objects in a Memorial Box. There are a few things in it already, and we want to add to it so we never forget all of the things that God does for us. We also read Matthew 6 about praying, giving and fasting in secret. So we are excited to come up with some family "secrets" and see what happens during this first Lenten adventure. I am really excited to see what happens. And I found out that soft pretzels are a traditional Lenten treat. I feel a cooking day coming up in our future!