SO how’s Lent going for you, now that we are almost exactly halfway through? What have you given up?

I find that people enjoy asking me, as a clergyman, the ‘what are you giving up’ question; and I suppose I ought to be pleased that people look disappointed when I reply that Lent isn’t just about giving things up. After all, at least it means that they know what Lent is, and that they are taking the idea of it seriously.

But I do really think it is a very superficial view of Lent which sees it as just about giving things up. A commitment to give up chocolate, or alcohol, or soap operas for Lent is fine. But often such a commitment can become an all-consuming enterprise, or even a matter of pride.

It can distract us from all sorts of other matters which might need our attention: relationships which have gone sour, tasks we have left undone, even the New Year’s resolutions that we have so miserably failed to keep! And giving things up can easily tip over to outright negativity, reinforcing the notion that Lent is about gloom and figurative hair shirts, six weeks that must simply be endured.

There is a more positive way of looking at Lent. The word derives from an Old English word lencten which means the spring. And just as spring contains within it hope for the new life which will grow to maturity during summer, so Lent contains within it hope for new life in the risen Christ. After all, if there had been no Easter there would be no point in Lent.

The Rev Simon Cowling

Rector of Bolton Abbey