So teach us to number our days

    that we may get a heart of wisdom

~ Psalm 90:12

As my kids have gotten older, gathering around a table has becomes harder.  We don’t just do it around our farm table in our dining area anymore, but we grab time at Chick Fila and Chipotle or maybe even standing around our island food in hand.  When we gather, we pray, and then I ask them, “Ok, so what are your hummers and bummers?” For orientation, a hummer is something you are rejoicing, and a bummer is something you are lamenting.  It has become a habit for our family.  It is in a sense the way we mark time.  We practice hummers and bummers in an attempt to number our days.  It becomes a stake to mark the Lord’s goodness, and to mark the reality of living in the “not yet” world of sin and brokenness.  All is not right with the world, but God is good — “All-The-Time, All-The-Time, God is good.”  

Marking time is something every culture does.  We remember important moments in our story.  Events that have shaped and formed us as a people.  What holidays are important in the American story?  We remember the troops, the vets, the presidents, significant people in history, our independence.  We also market other holidays, which become the “High-Holy” days of the calendar — Christmas and Easter; Halloween and Valentines Day.  These days are a merging of traditions and commercialism.  There is a push to buy things.  This is how we mark time.  Again every culture does it.  

The church calendar is an attempt to mark time by something else, namely Jesus. Pastor and Theologian Greg Thompson says the following: “In a world where history has no meaning, where it is just the tale of the victors or the scholars, a world where things emerge and dissipate, a world where nations are here today and gone tomorrow, we believe that history progress towards an end, a goal.  That goal and that end is Jesus and His kingdom. So we mark our days by the birth, life, death, ascension and pentecostal blessing of Jesus.”  

The church calendar has two primary cycles, between these two is something we call ordinary time.  First there is the incarnational cycle.  It centers on the brith of Jesus.  It begins with Advent moves toward Christmas and ends with the season of Epiphany, which highlights Jesus going public.  The second cycle is the paschal cycle, which centers around the death and resurrection of Jesus.  This season includes Lent, Holy Week and Easter ending with Pentecost and the blessing of the Spirit.  

We mark time with a different calendar, because we want to be shaped by a different story.  Yes we are Americans, and yes we buy stuff, but we don’t want that to be our story and our song.  We want to be the song that Jesus is playing in the world.  So we mark time by this story.  

Lent is one season in this story.  It is 40 days.  It moves from Ash Wednesday to Easter.  Lent is a time marked by repentance and renewal.  During this 40 days, practicing Lent, means we mark this time by self-examination, confession of sin and repentance because we are not yet the people God has made us to be.  But we also do so in hope, because of the resurrection of Jesus.  The shaping power of this 40 days is being vulnerable to the reality that we are a sinful and broken people in need of God’s renewing grace and love.  So we practice confession.  We embrace forgiveness.  We may practice self-denial in some tangible way.  We may also add some new practice into our life during this season.  We don’t do this to practice our own righteousness or win some sort of prize for self-denial.  We do it to enter the story.  We do it because we are lovers who need to be rehabituated out of our others loves.  We love glory.  We love victory.  We love progress.  We love acquisitions.  We don’t love losing.  We don’t love struggling.  We don’t love lamenting.  Lent forms us and shapes us to see that winning comes from losing.  Progress comes through struggle.  Lament and confession are part of the story living in this time between times, between Jesus’ ascension and second coming.  We practice Lent, so we may be renewed.  So we might experience God by the Spirit renewing us in faith and repentance.  

The Psalmist in Psalm 90 asks the Lord to teach him to number his days, so he might gain wisdom.  Wisdom is this way of being in the world, where we do what is right and good at the right time and in the right way.  We practice Lent, so we might gain wisdom, so we might be in our worlds living right, doing right at the right time and in the right way.  

God, help us to practice this Lenten season.  Help us to confess.  Help us to lament.  Help us to repent.  And bring us to Easter Sunday, renewed and refreshed as your people living in your world, numbering our days and walking in wisdom.  Amen. 

1. Calhoun, Rebecca. “On Keeping Lent.” Resurrection Brooklyn, 12 Feb. 2018, resurrectionbrooklyn.org/on-keeping-lent/.

2. Ibid.