In 2011, I wrote a post called 33 things to give up for Lent. A bunch of people read it. Eventually, I wrote a devotional for the season of Lent and called it Lent for Non-Lent People: 33 Things to Give up for Lent and Other Readings. During the last decade, a few thousand people have bought this book.

The goal has never been to convert people to Lent people. And it wasn’t intended as a research project on the history of Lent. Instead, it grew out of writings here at 300wordsaday and elsewhere that try to help us, you and me, understand how to bring what we believe and what we do closer together. How can we live lives more like the life Jesus invites us to live?

A starting point, if not the starting point, is to make small commitments about how we live. In the practice of Lent, people choose to give up something, though sometimes that can look like embracing something. I could say that the other way. In the practice of Lent, people choose to embrace something, which often means giving up other things.

I can, for example, give up meat on Friday. Or I can embrace eating soup with friends on Friday evening. The one focuses on what I don’t do. The other focuses on what I will do.

Intriguingly, of course, being together can feel like as much of a sacrifice as giving up meat.

And that’s the invitation of this season. To make commitments toward God, away from pursuing what makes us comfortable, and then to reflect on why it’s hard. Why am I so committed to my own comfort? Why, other than being introverted, might I want to avoid people?

When I look at the book, I think, “I should re-edit this, I should fix the typeface, I’ve changed from those examples.” And maybe someday I will do that. Perhaps, however, this season I need to reflect on what my concerns about the typeface tell me about me.

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Lent starts with Ash Wednesday on February 14, 2024. And the book is Lent for Non-Lent People: 33 Things to Give up for Lent and Other Readings.