Lent
E arlier this week I was talking to a co-worker, and he mentioned lent; he was pointing out a clam chowder item our company was selling for the season and said, in passing, “I love fish, but I have no clue when lent ends or what it’s even about.” I gave him a brief rundown of the reasons folks particulate in lent and then we moved on to other subjects fairly quickly. I initially salivated at the opportunity to get into an in-depth discussion about theology with my captive audience but could tell he wasn’t very interested, so I didn’t push the issue.
Later that day, however, I was reflecting on the conversation and was struck by the thought of this person that was so unfamiliar with a subject that would be easy to think was common knowledge.
It reminded me of a time a friend visited our church and when we all repeated The Lord’s Prayer in unison she whispered, “How did everyone know exactly what the preacher was going to say?” She’d grown up in the same town as me, gone to the same schools as me and consumed much of the same media as me, yet had never once been exposed to The Lord’s Prayer.
It’s a helpful reminder to those of us that grew up in the church that not everyone did; conversations like that are a wakeup call to not take for granted that everyone knows what we know, and to look for opportunities to share the truth with them.
The weeks leading up to Easter are exciting for engaged Christians. We buy new clothes, begin to refocus on the work Jesus did on the cross and make what amounts to be small sacrifices to honor the greatest sacrifice of all.
But there are those around us that don’t understand and if we keep our eyes and ears open, we can find small moments to help them understand, and that seems to me like the most important part of Easter: telling those that don’t know all about it.
