The Season of Lent
Lent 2025
Dates: Ash Wednesday (March 5, 2025) - Holy Saturday (April 19, 2025)
Color: Purple
Icon: Our Lenten seasonal icon prominently features an Ethiopian cross, designed by Atlas Minor.
A Portrait of the Season
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”
Hebrews 12:1-2a (KJV)
The Christian life is one of great imagination. That artful, daring act of living in light of realities that are not currently visible. This season of Lent is a principal time of imagination formation for those who claim Christ as Lord. In a way, Lent is an annual series of questions that comes upon the soul: Do you really wish to claim this Christ and his way? Is this truly what you believe about the world? Are you ready to imagine what bearing this Christ-life into the world looks like now? The answer might feel different for us with each passing year.
God knows this. God knows the fluctuation of our hearts, minds, and wills. The Christian Story doesn’t change—the readings for the given seasons, the events remembered, the hymns and prayers of the services. Indeed, we change and vary with the years; we hold tightly or lose our grip, we run or run out of breath. The journey requires much patience, mostly patience with ourselves.
These forty days called Lent (“length”) have grounded generations of Christians in The King of Imagination, the Creative One who imagines in us a reality we cannot yet see. We, along with the “cloud of witnesses”, are his “workmanship created in him unto good works” (Eph 2:10) and the ones through whom God reveals his loving imagination to the world. So now, in Lent, let us run on and be brave and lay aside the old ways of sin. The testifiers before us on this path tell of beauty ahead, worth any pain, sacrifice, or disruption in our present. There is a different world to be claimed even now, if we could only imagine it into being.
Our prayer at Grace Mosaic is that our entire community would deeply dare to imagine what beautiful acts are possible through even our little lives of love. We hope that over these next 40 days you will allow Jesus to give you renewed heart and attention for his creative activity in our world which continues even today in the midst of our ordinary lives.
-Written by Rev. Joel Littlepage. Adapted from the introduction from the Lent 2025 Living Prayer Periodical of the Daily Prayer Project, a publication of Grace Mosaic.
Resources for the Season
Lent Living Prayer Periodical
The Daily Prayer Project is a publication ministry of Grace Mosaic that supplies a holistic resource for spiritual formation to thousands across North America and the globe. You can access the Lent Living Prayer Periodical on our Members Homepage here.
GMO Formation Materials
Practices for the Season
The Church has long used Lent as a time to intensify the regular practices of the faith: prayer, fasting, generosity, and repentant acts of love for others. Consider establishing and nurturing meaningful rituals such as these in the life of your home this Lent. Feel free to use your imagination!
PRAYER. Use the season of Lent as a time to renew and reimagine rhythms of prayer in your life and in the life of your household. Consider establishing a steady rhythm of 20-30 minutes of prayer each morning and evening using The Daily Prayer Project.
Corporate Prayer during Lent: During Lent as in all seasons, we invite the whole community to join in daily prayer every morning and evening using the liturgies of the Daily Prayer Project.
We also encourage all to join our midweek prayer call on Wednesdays at 12pm (subscribe here to receive access to the call).
Practice Lectio Divina (or “Abiding”): Want to know more? Read our article “Abiding” to explore this time-tested way of praying with the word of God.
FASTING. Fasting, at its core, is the practice of abstaining from food for a period of time to devote oneself to feasting on God’s presence in prayer. Through fasting we come to terms with the weakness and humility of our condition and place ourselves in solidarity with those who hunger and thirst in our world. In the Christian Year, we feast and we fast, and then we feast again! The fast prepares us for the feast.
Corporate Fasting during Lent. During Lent, we invite the whole community to select a pattern of days/times/meals to fast throughout the week for the duration of Lent. Read our article “Fasting Before The Feast” to orient yourself to the practice and explore ways to implement it during this season.
ALMSGIVING. Give your money, food, possessions, and time away. Take the money that you would often spend on yourself and give it to the poor. Choose to deny yourself and find the freedom of simplicity. Read our article “People of the Gift” to explore this practice more deeply. The article was written for the Christmas season but almsgiving is a perennial discipline of Christian spirituality.
SERVICE. Read John 13:1-20. Take on the form of a servant to meet the needs of your neighbors, church family, and household. Serve joyfully in the name of Christ while imitating him. Consider instituting consistent rhythms of service during this Lenten season.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Schedule for the Season
“Lent is infused with grace and love, not opposed to it. Grace is a free gift to those who are in need. Lent is the season to know that need. It is a season to sense again the path of the Christian life and to recognize that an essential part of that journey is dying with Jesus.”
Music For The Season
Other Sermons, Articles, and Videos
Read: Giving Up Shame For Lent by Chuck Degroat
“Lent is not a season of trying harder. Lent is a season of rest and return - a return to the goodness of the earth, the ground, that humble place out of which you might recover your heart and rediscover joy.”
Watch: Flemming Rutledge on ‘The Crucifixion’
Flemming Rutledge has written one of the most important books on the Crucifixion in modern times. If you are looking for a wonderful lecture to summarize that work, we recommend this one. It is full of passion, intellect, and Rutledge’s characteristic charm. The Cross is the Crux of the Christian faith. Listen and be in awe and wonder again at the passion of our Lord.
Read: The Origins of Lent by Rev. Dr. Tim Lecroy
Rev. Dr. Tim Lecroy, a doctor of Church History, discusses the historical origins of Lent and Ash Wednesday. If you are looking for a deeper explanation of the history and theology of the Lenten season, then dig into these resources!
Books
Lent by Esau McCaulley [Highly recommended new book!]
"Lent is inescapably about repenting." Every year, the church invites us into a season of repentance and fasting in preparation for Holy Week. It's an invitation to turn away from our sins and toward the mercy and grace of Christ.
Often, though, we experience the Lenten fast as either a mindless ritual or self-improvement program. In this short volume, priest and scholar Esau McCaulley introduces the season of Lent, showing us how its prayers and rituals point us not just to our own sinfulness but also beyond it to our merciful Savior.
Practicing The Way by John Mark Comer
“We are constantly being formed by the world around us. To be formed by Jesus will require us to become his apprentice.
To live by what the first Christian disciples called a Rule of Life—a set of practices and relational rhythms that slow us down and open up space in our daily lives for God to do what only God can do—transforms the deepest parts of us to become like him.
This introduction to spiritual formation is full of John Mark Comer’s trademark mix of theological substance and cultural insight as well as practical wisdom on developing your own Rule of Life.
These ancient practices have much to offer us. By learning to rearrange our days, we can follow the Way of Jesus. We can be with him. Become like him. And do as he did.”
Also, check out Comer’s Project of the same name here. We will begin to utilize this material in our own life of formation at Mosaic within the coming year.
The Crucifixion by Flemming Rutledge
“Though the apostle Paul boldly proclaimed “Christ crucified” as the heart of the gospel, Fleming Rutledge notes that preaching about the cross of Christ is remarkably neglected in most churches today. In this book Rutledge addresses the issues and controversies that have caused pastors to speak of the cross only in the most general, bland terms, precluding a full understanding and embrace of the gospel by their congregations.”
Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter by Various Authors
A wonderful collection of literary and theological writings on the themes of the Lenten season.
Resources for Families with Young Children
The Apostles Creed: For All God’s Children by Ben Myers, Ill. Natasha Kennedy
Historically, Lent was a period where newcomers to the faith would be instructed through the use of the Apostles’ Creed. This is a great children’s book adaptation of the creed!
Illustrated Ministries Lent Material
Illustrated Ministries creates coloring and craft materials for children and families for use during each season of the Christian Year. The material is lovely and cross-culturally accessible.
Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss
“As she did in All Creation Waits, Gayle Boss along with illustrator David G. Klein invite the reader into the wild world of creation. Whether or not one observes the liturgical season of Lent, one cannot help but be touched and inspired by this work to take the stewardship of creation more seriously. As Boss says, "The promise of Lent is that something will be born of the ruin, something so astoundingly better than the present moment we cannot imagine it." Who among us does not want to live into that wild hope?”