Lent, at its most literal, is the forty days—excluding Sundays—from Ash Wednesday into Holy Week. The church chose forty because it is the biblical number of wilderness experiences: Israel’s forty years of wandering and Jesus’ forty days of testing. Lent is meant to feel dry and exposed. It is a season that places us intentionally in the wilderness. However, the Hebrew root for wilderness is closely related to the term for “Word.” That suggests that the wilderness experiences are also the same places that the Lord speaks most powerfully into our lives.

Lent is a journey into the wilderness. It is not a spiritual self-improvement plan. It is not a season for proving devotion, earning favor, or intensifying religious effort so that God will grant us our three wishes. In a culture addicted to achievement, optimization, and acceleration, Lent resists the illusion that spiritual growth happens by doing more.

At its heart, Lent is a season of slowing down and journeying with Jesus toward the cross. It is a time to strip away what distracts and disorients us so that truth can surface—about God, about ourselves, and about what actually governs our lives. 
Historically, the church named practices like fasting, silence, solitude and Sabbath not as marks of spiritual achievement, but as means of attention. When these practices became rote, their intent was often lost. They were never about increasing holiness scores; they were about creating space for the Holy Spirit to work in us.

The Holy Spirit uses these practices to tell us the truth about our loves. They reveal what we reach for when we are anxious, what we cling to for control, and what we rely on to make life feel manageable. Fasting, silence, solitude and Sabbath are the not-doing practices that can help expose us. These practices interrupt patterns that quietly form our days without our consent. They slow us down long enough to notice what rises to the surface when the noise fades.

In this way, Lent mirrors the journey of Job—and ultimately the way of Jesus Himself. It does not rush past suffering or avoid the valley of darkness. It teaches us to pray honestly without editing our pain, to endure silence without forcing meaning, and to remain faithful when obedience feels unrewarded in the immediate. Lent trains us to live without easy answers.

Job and Lent strip the faithful of their illusions—of control, certainty, and self-reliance. They force us to learn to wait on God. That faith does not always resolve questions, but it does deepen dependence.

Lent, like Job, loosens our grip. It trains us to stop grasping and to relearn what it means to fully trust a crucified and risen Lord—not by striving harder, but by surrendering everything to Him.

• Over the next forty days, what is one thing you need to loosen your grip on?
• What is one spiritual practice you could research and implement over the next forty days to help loosen that grip?

Let the journey begin.