By Meg Newton
We are a week and a half into the season we call Lent, the weeks leading up to Easter when we are encouraged to be intentional about prayer and repentance, fasting, and caring for the poor—three practices that Jesus teaches about in Matthew 6. Those practices are meant to remind us of our finiteness, our fragility, and our need for a savior—and to prepare our hearts for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
If you’ve chosen a practice for this season, my prayer for you is that it wouldn’t just be about discipline and staying faithful to that thing—whether it’s not eating chocolate, or staying off social media, or fasting on Fridays, or serving at a local food bank. All of which are good in their own right (well, we could debate about giving up chocolate!), but a Lenten practice is about more than just sticking with something. It should help you make space for God to draw you to Himself, to show you the ways you’ve wrongly prioritized or idolized things in your life, to increase in a you a desire to pray and to be honest before God, and to renew in you a grateful, humble awe of the gospel.
I’ve chosen to fully fast on certain days during Lent—and I’m saying that here to hold myself accountable, not to appear righteous!—but I’ve also been reading Adorning the Dark, a book about “making” and creativity by the songwriter and author Andrew Peterson—and in it, Peterson mentions that a while back he started writing a sonnet a day during Lent. First, I love the idea of adding something as a Lenten practice—a moment, behavior, response, or creative task—as a way to make space for God. And specifically, a sonnet a day? What an amazing way of intentionally noticing beauty and praising God each day, and of partnering with God our Creator in the creative restoration of our world.
So my challenge to myself and to you is—what could we make this Lent? In what way could you be creative, as a reflection of being made in the image of a creative God? Maybe you could be intentional in the way you prepare to plant your garden—which is an amazing creative act. Maybe you could bake bread for your family. (I have some sour dough starter I’m willing to share if you want to take that route!) Maybe you could write a haiku, if not a sonnet, that describes something of God’s creation that you pause to really notice. Maybe you could snap a photo of something that brings you joy, and rather than just posting it to Instagram, use it as a prompt for prayers of praise.
Whether you consider yourself artistic or creative or not, you are, even if you just haven’t found your medium. (Maybe it’s creativity with numbers, or furniture arranging, or hair styles!) So even as you maybe give up meat or social media or Netflix this Lent, also add something creative, and use your creativity as a way to reflect and draw closer to our Creator and Savior, who loves you and has gifted you and wants you to know Him more.
Meg Newton is a wife, mother of two teenagers, occasional poet, baker of very basic sour dough bread, and the associate pastor of Trinity Church in New Canaan.
