My Child’s Perspective on Lent
theophilus March 4th, 2009
I was cooking dinner last night and my first grade daughter was helping me.
We were talking about her day when she told me that she was excited that there were only 34 days until Easter. I asked her how she came to that conclusion. She said there are 40 days in Lent and we were on the sixth day, so there had to be 34 days left.
I then went into an lengthy explanation about how there are different views on the actual length of Lent. She then asked me how I measured Lent. I told her from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday, which would make Lent actually 42 or 43 days long.
She looked at me with a quizzical look on her face, so I told her that it didn’t matter the actual length of Lent; what mattered was that we refer to the 40 days of Lent so we use the season the way Jesus used his 40 days in the desert.
At this point, her quizzed look turned to one of enlightenment; and she replied, “maybe, the extra days of Lent are the ones Jesus used to travel back and forth to the desert.”
All I could think was that I bet no one has really made this observation; and that she may just be right.
A little gem from the mind of a child.
We should be more like little children. We might actually start seeing some new perspectives on our faith.
