By Lilly Lewin
I’ve been fortunate to live in many different places. In one town, Lent was what you found in your belly button or your dryer, it was not a season of the church year. In another town where we lived, Lenten specials were advertised on every fast food sign offering fish sandwiches on Fridays and fish fry dinners offered around town on Friday nights. What about you?
When you hear the word “Lent,” what comes to mind? What does the word make you think of or feel?
LENT OR LINT? Do you think about MOVING towards Easter? Or do you just think about the stuff in your dryer? Do you think “sack cloth and ashes,” fasting or prayer? Or does the word Lent make you feel guilty? Do you think about giving stuff up for Lent like chocolate, coffee or soft drinks?
What if when you heard the word “LENT” it made you think of an opportunity to grow closer to Jesus?
Originally, the season of Lent was only the week before Easter – the week we now know as Holy Week. It was an opportunity to remember and live into the last week of the life of Jesus rather than a whole 40-day fasting experience. Tradition says that Mary, Jesus’ mom, was the first to relive and experience the last week of the life of Jesus. She was the first to walk the Way, which became the stations of the cross. Walking and praying the stations of the cross was a way to remember the suffering of her son.
How can we remember and engage the last week of Jesus’ life – individually and as family and friends?
- You might find stations of the cross to walk and pray at your local Catholic Church or Episcopal Church.
- You can do an art pilgrimage by looking at art that tells the story from Palm Sunday to Easter. (See example links below)
- You can create or find a Lenten or Holy Week playlist on Spotify or iTunes to help you engage the story through song.
- You can read together the Biblical account starting with Palm Sunday and going through Holy Saturday and the celebration of Resurrection on Easter.
Reading and listening are great, but experiencing is even better. For this reason, we’ve created an interactive Holy Week Guide to help retell the story of the last week of Jesus’ life. It acts as a visual reminder of what happened each day during the last week of Christ’s life. People of all ages are able to participate and get involved in the experience. You could include this experience as part of your breakfast or dinner time, at your kitchen table or around your coffee table before bedtime.
The Light in the Darkness experience features a candlelit centerpiece that works a bit like a reverse Advent wreath. Start with all the candles lit on Palm Sunday and Monday, and then you extinguish a candle each day, and thus the centerpiece is dark on Saturday. And all candles are relit on Easter to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the LIGHT of the world returning!
Begin with a plate or dish for your centerpiece and five candles. I used a red candle for Good Friday and placed it in the center, but you could also do the candles in a row. The other supplies are listed and can easily be found at a dollar store or around your home. Remember you don’t have to do all of this, just start. Do a couple of days. Do what works for you and your family. And feel free to modify the questions for your children’s ages.
Our family started with just the candles and purple cloth activity the first year. And if you get behind in the story, don’t worry, you can keep going with the centerpiece and you can even use it after Easter to remember the story! Get your family members to join in the creation of the centerpiece and gathering the props. Just use what you have!
I love this way to pray, because we tend to remember much more of what we do than what we hear. However you choose to observe this time of remembrance – with our Holy Week Guide, through art, music, Stations of the Cross, or another way entirely – I pray that it would bless your family and draw you nearer to one another and to Christ.
About Lilly Lewin: Lilly is a worship curator, speaker, author, artist, and founder of thinplaceNASHVILLE, and freerangeworship.com. She creates sacred space prayer experiences and leads workshops and retreats across the country and beyond. Her passion is to help people of all ages engage God using all their senses and bring art and artists back to church. She is a big fan of Instagram (@lillylewin), writes a weekly blog post called freerangefriday at godspacelight.com, leads Finding Your Thinplace pilgrimages and creates resources for worship at freerangeworship.com.
Lilly and her husband, Rob, live in Nashville, TN, where she’s on the lookout for good coffee, dark chocolate and the best place to watch the sun set.
Lilly Lewin serves on the Youthfront Christian parenting and caregiving resource team.
