Lent #7: Discipline 2 of 7 - Repentance.

Repent and believe in the gospel.

(Mark 1:15)

“Jesus came preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’" (Mk 1:15). The appearance of Christ among us causes us to change our minds about things. That’s what “repentance” means: to change our mind; or, to change direction. In short, to change the trajectory of our lives. We wouldn’t think of it if we hadn’t encounter Christ.

Repentance is the second of the seven Lenten disciplines. What would it mean for me to repent during Lent? Haven’t I already repented? I think I “went forward” once or twice. I was baptized. So, I must have repented back there somewhere. I lack a good repentance testimony. I’m a bit envious of those who share dramatic stories about how they were saved from a life of decadence and debauchery.

The Amish, I’ve been told, send their teenagers out into the world to “run around” a spell after which they can either remain in the world, or rejoin the community through repentance and baptism. As teenagers we did something like that in our own way. As the Psalm goes: “Remember not the sins of my youth…” (Ps 25). Even the righteous Job thought it unfair to bring up the “sins of [his] youth” (Jb 13:26). You can’t come out of adolescence unscathed.

Repentance does not come on our terms. It requires a spiritual encounter: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him when he comes near” (Isa 55:6). An old Fanny Crosby hymn, best sung by Lyle Lovett, gets to the heart of it:

Pass me not, O gentle Savior,

Hear my humble cry;

While on others Thou art calling,

Do not pass me by.

Maybe Lent will provide us with such an encounter. I don’t suppose we can practice the first Lenten discipline of self-examination, without it leading us to the second Lenten discipline of repentance.