Creating Family Traditions around Lent and a Free Family Devotional
Is it Lent already? It seems like it was just Valentine’s Day? Lent snuck up on me this year. How does your family observe Lent? In our current culture there are so many ways to celebrate advent. We have advent calendars of various kinds: jam, Legos, wine, wine, socks, beauty….If you can think of a product, they probably have an advent calendar related to it. Then there is singing. People are so excited to sing Christmas songs and hymns all season long. But in modern times the season of Lent seems to have fallen by the wayside. When is the last time you heard your Christian radio station play nothing but Lenten songs for 40 days?
Why Should We Celebrate Lent?
Lent Prepares You for the Trials, Tribulations, and Temptations of this World
Life is hard. Every one of us will go through periods of trials and temptations. We will experience disappointment, loss, sickness, and death. The Bible tells us that we need to expect trials as Christians, and yet so often the modern American church leaves us ill equipped as our contemporary services are all focused on upbeat praise songs and positivity. Whereas Advent seems loud and exciting, Lenten services and songs are somber. Lent focuses on introspection. The hymns deal with difficulty and trial. These are these the songs that you need written on your heart when facing trials. Having a ritual and routine (or should I say liturgy) of introspection each year prepares you and strengthens you for suffering and hardship.
As we focus on the suffering Christ endured it can help us in our trials
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”
I Peter 4: 12-13, NIV
Lent is About Community
As a child our church had Lenten services every Wednesday evening. Before service, the old ladies of the church would come together to make soup, rolls, cake, and Kool-Aid with not quite enough sugar in it to taste good. Then the youth group kids would serve the food to the congregation. This encouraged families to attend the services as parents didn’t have to figure out how to feed the kids before heading out the door for worship. I also have a deep appreciation for the Lenten services themselves. Being in the evenings, the service concluded with a darkened sanctuary and an illuminated cross. It had a very different vibe that a typical Sunday morning service. The songs would be more somber. I remember “Go to Dark Gethsemane” and “Abide with Me” being particular favorites. “Abide with Me” has stuck with me so much that it was one of the hymns I sang to my son when I was nursing him.
As a body we are connected. One part affects the other parts. Lent should bring Christians together as we share in the sufferings of Christ—together. As we share in the suffering of each other—together. I miss the community aspect of Lent as most of the churches I’ve attended as an adult only celebrate Ash Wednesday, and I don’ t think there has ever been a meal before it. I think by foregoing weeknight services during Lent, we really are missing a lot as a body. The Catholics unlike the Protestants still have that with their Fish Fries and such. They can either go to the church and socialize around food, but they can also spiritually bond with others on a Friday night when everyone at the table orders fish. Somehow most (but not all) of us Protestants have lost that. Even many liturgical protestants have lost the fellowship aspect that comes with celebrating Lent. Additionally liturgical traditions like Lent connect us with all the Christians who have come before us who celebrated Lent; it gives us a sense of our place in church history.
Lent Allows You to Understand the Significance of the Resurrection
We can’t truly understand the joy of the resurrection until we understand why we needed Christ to die in the first place. And to do that we need to understand the significance of our own sin.
To quote Martin Luther, the great leader of the Protestant Reformation:
“The first duty of the Gospel preacher is to declare God’s Law and show the nature of sin….thus they will become humble and yearn for help.”
Another preacher John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress stated:
“The man who does not know the nature of the law cannot know the nature of sin. And he who does not know the nature of sin cannot know the nature of the Savior.”
The famous preacher John Wesley said:
“Before I can preach love, mercy, and grace, I must preach sin, Law, and judgment. Preach 90% Law and 10% grace.”
Observing Lent forces you to slow down and look at your own sins and the sins of your community. It forces us to look at the suffering of Christ and appreciate what he endured for us. When we forget that, we celebrate Easter glibly. I know I have been guilty of that as I’ve been often distracted by springtime stress and commercialism and forget about Lent. As we have a post-Christian culture, it is important more now than ever to observe Lent and make it a part of our family traditions—especially as so many churches have moved away from traditional Lenten services.
Family Traditions
Each family has their own traditions around Easter. Unlike Christmas, there seems to be less consensus about what families do apart from decorating eggs, doing egg hunts, and getting a yummy basket of candy from the Easter Bunny. Unfortunately, it is very hard to connect these “fun” traditions to Jesus’s death and resurrection. You can do a little bit with the eggs representing an empty tomb, but otherwise these springtime traditions are very disconnected. That’s why it’s important to focus on traditions that draw attention to the real meaning of Easter. So, here are the ideas I’ve come up with to celebrate Lent with our family. Maybe your family has other great traditions? Please share them in the comments, so we can learn from one another! 😁
Easter Bunny Vs Sacrificial Lamb
Bunnies are sooo cute! Who can resist all the Easter bunnies with the pastel outfits and colorful eggs? They make me want to decorate my house with them. After a gloomy, grey Ohio winter, any bit of color livens things up. Yet Easter bunnies don’t really have anything to do with Jesus. However, lambs do! Jesus is our Passover lamb. It’s really fun to decorate our house for the holidays now that I have a son, but I’m making a concerted effort to try to decorate with lambs and crosses instead of bunnies. We have a few bunnies and eggs here and there, but I want my son to understand that Easter is really about the sacrificial Lamb of God.
“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1: 29
Lenten Wreath
We really like doing the advent wreath as a family. We sit in the dining room and have family devotions and light the advent calendars. I was really missing that during Lent until I found Lenten candles. There were a couple of different variations online. Some were in the shape of a cross, and others were in the shape of the crown of thorns. I’ve also seen homemade versions using various candle holders people found around the house. We decided to purchase one off of Etsy that looked like a crown of thorns. We also read that some people extinguish a purple candle every Sunday of Lent and a red one on Good Friday until there are no candles left signifying the absence of Christ on Good Friday. Then on Easter we can light all the candles because the light of the world has come back! We kind of liked extinguishing the candles because of the contrast between that and the advent wreath, so that’s what we decided to do as a family. Although sometimes we light all the candles on Easter Monday instead of Easter Sunday as we may be celebrating elsewhere on Easter.
Family Devotions
We try to do family devotions and a prayer every night after dinner. This tradition started when my husband and I were praying for a child. We’ve used a couple of different devotionals for preschoolers and an advent devotional for kids. We have a Lenten devotional for kids, but it only covers Holy Week. So this year, I’m going to write a few of my own family devotionals. I only have the bandwidth to write one per week with the idea of reading one every Sunday in Lent. (Although you could do it any day of the week.) Next year I may write more and add to it.
I’m happy to share my devotional with you for free if you subscribe to my blog. The devotional for the first week is “Being Hangry” based on Matthew 14: 1-11 (the Temptation of Jesus). This is also the first reading for the first Sunday in Lent if your church does a yearly lectionary reading cycle. I hope to write four more devotionals this year—one for each Sunday in Lent. It may be a small thing to do one Lenten devotional per week, but it’s better to do something than nothing even if it’s small. And small is manageable for most of us.
Kids Activities
We bought The Easter Story Egg which is a nesting egg that tells the story of Holy Week. Each day your child opens up a new egg and reads the corresponding story. I will warn you that the devotional that comes with the egg is a little long and hard to follow for the littles, but the concept is still fun and memorable.
To Fast of Not to Fast?
In many traditions, people give up something like meat or chocolate for Lent. I never really have. In the church I grew up with, they always emphasized that we didn’t need to give anything up because we can’t add to the sacrifice that Jesus did. So I don’t think they discouraged us from doing so (perhaps intentionally). As I’m older, I can see both the wisdom that comes from fasting and the wisdom from refraining to fast. Both can be beneficial and strengthen your relationship with God, so I think whether or not you give up something for Lent should be a personal decision, and your decision may vary from year to year.
Conclusion
I need more of God in my life! I need to consciously focus on my depravity, so that I can be grateful for his costly love for me. I know I have a tendency towards pride, so it helps to have a church calendar that grounds me in Scriptural truths. That is why the season of Lent is valuable to me and we try to observe it as a family. Additionally, I want my son to understand the significance of Easter, and I know that he will learn more by what we do than what we say. Family traditions that you do as a child have a way of sticking with you.
What does your family to for Lent?
What does your family do for Lent? Be sure to share your ideas in the comments, so we can learn from one another.
Subscribe to my blog for the free family devotional “Being Hangry” based on Matthew 14: 1-11. Additionally, I have some other resources that you might be interested in during this Lenten Season. Check out my blog post on Haggai 1 and my page on the Feast of Leviticus 23 with a section that has lots of resources on the Passover.
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