When it feels like the world is falling apart, what is the purpose of Lent?

By Karly Noelle Abreu White

There’s so much to darken our thoughts at this point in history: the climate crisis, increased censorship, trauma and offenses against POC and LGBTQ+ people, the war in Ukraine, the third year of pandemic, and on and on. Where I live in southern California, drought is so common it’s a punchline. We are accustomed to the hills being brown, stricken, covered in dry grasses and tumbleweeds. I forget, often, that this is a lovely place, a paradise named after a fantasy land, not a blighted one. We expect wildfires. We know any day the Big One—a catastrophic earthquake that could rend the West Coast in two—could be upon us. We live with these calamities on our shoulders, trying to ignore their weight as we go about our days, with their million tiny tragedies.

This year southern California is indeed in drought. We’ve only had a fraction of the rain we need. And yet, the hills nearby—the hills that were blackened by fire only a short few years ago—are covered with fresh, bright green grass, and a soft yellow fuzz of mustard flowers. Like a baby, tentatively reaching out its hands, life keeps growing, reaching towards the light. Butterflies flutter over the blooms. The fragrance of jasmine reaches me every night, and my heart lightens. People flock to poppy fields to see the orange stretching to the blue, blue horizon.

Yes, there will be fires, and many horrors besides. But right now, there are flowers. There are blooms, improbably, in this dry and desert place.

Lent is that reminder. We will have fires and floods, trials and tragedies. Lent does not let us forget that Jesus was brutally murdered. That our sin has bound us in heavy chains. But oh, Lent has an end, my friends. Lent doesn’t stretch on and on forever, world without end. This is not Narnia in the thrall of the White Witch.[i] There is a holiday at the end. There are butterflies and flowers, eggs and hot cross buns. The light is getting brighter, don’t you see it? There is an end in sight.

We celebrate Lent not because we revel in remembering suffering, but because we know that that suffering has an end. Lent matters because it reminds us that all darkness and despair comes to an end, and that end with resurrection and new life. Lent matters because it ends in Easter.

[i] Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 5-8.