LENT FREES

In Lent, we imitate Jesus when He was led by the Spirit into the desert. Here He fasted for forty days and overcame the temptations of the evil one (Mt 4:1ff). Through fasting, Jesus experienced great freedom (Is 58:6). Thus, He emerged from the desert in the power of the Spirit (Lk 4:14) to proclaim the good news of freedom to captives and release to prisoners (Lk 4:18). After His forty-day fast, Jesus announced the ultimate freedom of an everlasting Jubilee Year (Lk 4:19; Lv 25:8ff).

In Lent, we should imitate both Jesus' fasting and His freedom. We must repent of being a cowardly, cowering church, chained and leashed by the world. This Lent, by God's grace, let's shatter "the gates of brass and burst the bars of iron" and break out of self-made, sin-made prisons (Ps 107:16). May we be unleashed and unbridled, moving about at large (Ps 31:9), and set free in the open (Ps 18:20; 2 Sm 22:20).

Lent should lead to the ultimate freedom of the resurrection. If we let the risen Lord set us free, we are really free (Jn 8:36). Lent frees.