Why Only Work on Spiritual Discipline 40 Days a Year?
Spiritual discipline and growth in Jesus are not limited to 40 days of the year and should occur everyday. Likewise, things done during Lent should always be done with the purpose of integrating them into our entire Christian life. Here the spring-cleaning analogy works well. Lent is a time of extra intense spiritual house cleaning, where the focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving becomes the most important and supersedes all else. Although many claim to do this kind of self-evaluation frequently, I’d say it’s a safe bet that traditions without Lent rarely come close to devoting even forty days to it.
