I love Lent…I love Lent.  It’s like a long, hot shower for the soul, spring cleaning for our spirits.  There’s such value in observing the church year, such pastoral help.  Lent helps us come clean through self-examination, confession, repentance, and amendment of life.  I used to keep an old Dennis the Menace cartoon in my Bible.  The little boy is kneeling at his bedside at bedtime, and prays with his little hands together, “God, I’m here to turn myself in!”  And thanks be to God, when we turn ourselves in to him, he hugs us and holds us, and helps us do better the next time.

This past Ash Wednesday, the wonderful online devotional Pray As You Go described Lent as “a time to repent and repent means ‘turn back’.  Each Lent we begin again to take a long honest look at our lives, to speak humbly to our loving God and turn back to him. Each one of us has different weaknesses and troubles that our Lord longs to heal…God’s loving desire is for our return.”

I approach this season gratefully and humbly, almost with a sigh of relief, with true sorrow for my own sins, but at the same time expectantly, knowing that there is forgiveness of sins and help towards holiness, and that God’s love will encounter me in deeper ways for the disciplines of the season, each of which say in their own way “We turn back you, we turn to you, loving Father, have mercy on us.”  And he does.