40-Day Journey: From Desert to Deliverance

Day 1: We walk a Psalmic journey of lamentation and fasting and Lent draws us consciously into that pilgrimage.

As a Reformed Protestant, I am committed to the Church Calendar — not because I wish to be a slave to it, but because I recognize its inevitability. We all follow some calendar. The real question is: which calendar? I raise this because Protestantism rests upon a Trinitarian view of the world. At its best, it does not isolate ideas or treat them as a detached corpus; it gathers them into a coherent whole. If that is our religion, then certain questions cannot be avoided, and the question of time is one of them. We are bound to bring time into harmony.

Lent, I suggest, is profoundly Trinitarian. As the Trinity is a communion of love, so Lent provides a means for expressing that love within the community. Lent makes sense of time. Where sins are confronted and battled, there you find a vigorous Trinitarian community and vision. It serves the Church by giving us a season of determined warfare against sin for the sake of the body.

It offers a vision of history that undergirds the biblical narrative and reflects the ordinary routines, liturgies, and rituals of human beings. Lent restructures our lives. All Christians must rebalance areas where indifference has grown disproportionate. We walk a Psalmic journey of lamentation and feasting, and Lent draws us consciously into that pilgrimage.

In essence, Lent reveals the God who suffers in the Person of Jesus Christ. God’s image-bearers move from the dust of fallen Adam toward the glory of the risen Final Adam. To disconnect Lent from the Church Calendar is to disparage history and fracture human coherence.

Martin Luther once observed, “The calendar and the order of feasts exist so that the Gospel may be preached in its fullness throughout the year.” The seasons do not replace the Gospel; they give it rhythm in time.

This Lenten-tide, I aim to offer 40 meditations through various biblical texts to ground us in our Trinitarian faith. May your Lent be holy and merry.

~ Pastor Brito

---

What is Lent?

As we begin this season, it is good that we understand what it is. What is Lent? The word Lent means “spring” or “lengthening days,” which fittingly connects to fasting. Just as spring involves pruning before growth and preparing the soil before harvest, Lent is the Church’s spiritual springtime — a season to clear away sin and cultivate repentance before the joy of Easter. Fasting, then, is not death for its own sake but preparation for new life as the light increases and resurrection approaches.

Every year, as we enter this season, we need to look at it afresh. This season can be deeply rewarding for you and your family, but you must enter it understanding how it echoes throughout redemptive history. Lent is altogether typological. It’s a season filled with echoes of forgiveness.

Redemptive Lent

Lent is the penitential season of the Church. It prepares us for Holy Week, and therefore, liturgical churches use purple to adorn their vestments and paraments because Lent leads us to a Crucified Lord in purple royalty.

Lent is the desert before the promised land of the Resurrection. It is the arduous but necessary journey to the empty tomb.

Lent is the pathless mazes of the wilderness for Israel, and simultaneously the way out of the wilderness. Lent is the incurable disease of sin and yet the cure of sin. Lent is the long wait Jacob endured for Rachel. Lent is the “Thus saith the Lord,” when the devil whispers, “Who said ye shall be like God?” Lent is the sacrifices of incomplete priests and the exile of a perfect man so that we might be set free.

Lent is the love of injustice poured on a just Man. Lent is fasting with hope. Lent is giving up idols and turning to the true icon of God, Jesus Christ. Lent is finding joy in the midst of suffering. Lent is loving without expecting to be loved. Lent is death. Lent is death to us. Lent is repenting and being forgiven. Lent is exploring your weakness. Lent is judging yourself first. Lent is John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord with locusts for the unjust and honey for the just.

Lent is a pattern for redemption. Lent is God moving his people from the desert to the city, from ruin to a new civilization. Lent is obedience through sacrifice, love through death.

And so we begin not with triumph but with pilgrimage; a people walking toward resurrection through repentance.

The Work of the Forty Days

In this season, we are called to do life together in the next 40 days, not because we wish to earn Christ’s sacrifice, but because Christ’s sacrifice has taken away our ability to earn him. If Jesus had not died, we would still be 2,000 years later seeking to earn the way to the Father. But we cannot earn what has been earned for us. If fasting, ashes, or any such thing made us acceptable, Lent would be a wasteful experience. Lent is fruitful for us because Jesus has been fruitful and multiplied in his death.

Lent is active.

Are we invested in destroying evil, or in being deceived by it? Killing sin so that sin does not kill us? In actively seeking Jesus or sitting passively waiting for a mystical experience? In waiting to serve or seeking to serve? Pursuing righteousness or waiting for righteousness to bump into you? Lent is actively pursuing the relief of others. Lent is giving up childish ways and embracing the ways of Calvary.

Thus, the Church does not merely remember, she practices. The season trains our bodies to agree with our confession.

God With Us

Lent is contemplative. How often have we meditated on the truth that God is for us because of the cross? He is for us. Like a father is to his child; like a mother to her daughter; like a satisfied teacher to his student; yes, in those ways, but so much more. He is for us even though it cost his life; he is for us even though it would shake the very universe he created. He is for us even though we were not for him: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Contemplate the God-is-with-us theme of Lent. For God so loved the world that he sent his son to be for us.

Why Lent? Because Lent takes away our arrogance. It instills a sense of need. It builds a habit of dependence. It prepares our wounds for healing by Another. Lent is the power of Another to do what we cannot do for ourselves. We need Lent because without it Christ is no king, we are no people, and life is no gift. We all must take up our cross and follow the Christ of the cross. In Him we move, and live and have our being.

May we Lent well! The journey begins today!