LENT 2024

Here are a few ways in which you can observe Lent individually or as a family. Choose one and stick with it and, above all, ask God to help you!

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• Do a Lenten fast. This can mean fasting from food, or alcohol, social media or gaming, anything that you feel is a little bit of a dependency. Fasting includes all 40 days, except Sundays.

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• Take on a new habit. This could be to pray daily during a certain time of day, to go for a daily walk so you can focus your thoughts on God’s loving presence, or anything that takes you out of your daily routine and helps you to focus on God.

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• Make pretzels. The pretzel is the oldest Christian food and was created to accommodate the Lenten fast. Originating in Europe and created by monks, pretzels were made using only water, flour, and salt, simple ingredients that align with the Lenten emphasis on fasting and abstention from richer foods. Its distinctive twisted shape resembles arms crossed in prayer, making it an apt symbol for the penitential season of Lent. There are plenty of recipes online.

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• Cover all of the icons and crosses in your home with purple cloth.

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• Remove all flowers and other signs of spring from your home and workplace so it will be all the more glorious when Easter finally arrives. 

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• Ask your children to go out and gather twigs and branches with no leaves. Tie a simple tie around them with purple fabric and hang them from your front door. This is a very beautiful and very dramatic reminder that we have entered the time of Lent. 

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• Participate in our church’s Mite Box initiative.

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• Since we will no longer say the word Alleluia throughout Lent, say goodbye to the Alleluias by having your children write Alleluia on a board, decorate it with flowers, and put it away in a chest, drawer, or closet until Easter Day.

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• Do the devotion for the day with your family. After the devotion, hand out little slips of paper and pencils or pens. Ask your children to come up with an area of weakness in their lives that they need God’s help to change. Have them write that area down. Make sure you set an example by sharing a weakness and writing it down as well. Set the slips in an earthenware vessel and burn them with a match, or throw them into a fire burning in your fireplace or a fire pit outside. Explain to your children that just as their slips of paper are burned up and are no longer recognizable, so are our sins when we ask for forgiveness. 

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And last but not least:

• Start your spring cleaning!