Opinion column

Discover the ongoing benefits of Lent

James Knight suggests that the disciplines or abstinences of Lent may have longer lasting benefits in our lives.

The period between Ash Wednesday and Easter is a time when many people cut down on or abstain from something - chocolate, alcohol, television, and so on - to strengthen self-discipline, create space for more prayerful reflection and deeper spiritual focus, or support their physical and psychological well-being.
 
All of those benefits are valuable. But there’s another advantage to abstinence that’s often overlooked: doing without something for a set period can reveal that you might be better off without it permanently.
 
Maybe abstaining from scrolling TikTok or from debating politics on X showed you that it’s not the best use of your time, and you can do without them. Maybe cutting out chocolate bars after lunch and substituting them for a piece of fruit helped your diet and health, and showed you that you can do this indefinitely for the longer-term benefits. In cases like these, and many more like them, we might not have enjoyed the benefits of the permanent abstinence had we never embarked upon the temporary abstinence.
 
And I think it also works the other way around. There are many good and life-giving things we might never experience if we don’t give them a try. Sometimes we assume a new habit will be too demanding, too dull, or too time consuming - until we actually attempt it. A short season of intentional practice can reveal that something we thought would be burdensome is, in fact, nourishing.
 
Perhaps a few weeks of silent morning prayer opens a sense of peace you didn’t know you were missing. Perhaps volunteering once on a church team during Lent awakens a desire to serve more regularly. Perhaps reading Scripture daily for forty days shows you that God has been waiting to speak into your life in ways you hadn’t slowed down long enough to hear.
 
Lent, then, can become a kind of fertile soil for the growth of spiritual potential. And if the seasonal practice of Lent can reveal a permanent invitation to longer term blessings, Easter is the ideal opportunity to allow those renewals to draw us closer to the life God intends for us.
 
As Easter approaches, it’s worth asking not only “What did I give up?” but also “What did I discover?” What habits proved unnecessary, and what practices proved unexpectedly life giving? Lent may last forty days, but the clarity it brings can shape the way we live long after the season ends. 

The above image was created by AI.

James Knight is a regular columnist for Christian community websites Network Norfolk and Network Ipswich. He also blogs regularly as The Philosophical Muser, including his Philosophical Muser You Tube channel, and contributes articles to UK think tanks The Adam Smith Institute and The Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). 

The views carried here are those of the author, not necessarily those of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users.