I do hope the title doesn't sound too cheesy! I didn't sit down and figure out how to make the word LENT into an acronym; the phrase just popped into my mind as I was walking home from the local Curves Fitness Club the other morning.

I was enjoying the bright sunshine, despite the nip in the air, and mulling over the fact that I had a very definite inner urge to blog about Lent, coupled with a real concern that the end result would not be a “holier than thou” piece, producing guilt feelings within anyone who read beyond the first line. I happened to glance up at the bare branches of the trees silhouetted against the blue sky, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw three birds sitting on some very high branches. This was the first sign of spring that I had seen in Ontario. I had been in Vancouver and Portland the previous month. There spring was well underway, with green shoots evident everywhere in parks and gardens, and temperatures warm enough to be able to sit outside and enjoy a cup of coffee. It had been with a sense of the weariness of winter that I had come home to face piles of dirty snow.

My return had coincided with the beginning of Lent, so one of the first things I had done was to lift down from my bookshelf a well-worn edition of God's Springtime─Readings and Prayers for Lent by Joyce Huggett. This treasure, first acquired in England where spring comes early, has now accompanied my Lenten journey for 17 years, even in New Zealand. The analogy did not fit too well there, as the season of Advent could more appropriately be seen as God's springtime because, with the reversal of the seasons in the southern hemisphere, Lent is observed in the fall.

So why the same book every year even in places where the analogy does not fit? It is not the only devotional aid I use during the season, but the thought of Lent being God's springtime is one that resonates deeply within me, no matter where in the world I happen to be. Andrea Brown summed up very well one of the reasons in an insightful observation that she made in Salvationist in May 2008: “The Christian year is never quite the same every time we move through it. Our lives are constantly being re-interpreted into the story of God with us.”

I am never more conscious of this than in the season of Lent. Our older daughter, Joanne, was born late on the Saturday which preceded Palm Sunday. Because of the fluctuation of the festival, her first birthday fell on Easter Sunday. But rather than approaching that day with joy, I anticipated it with very mixed feelings, for my father had gone to be with the Lord just three weeks after Joanne had been born. Living and working in the “goldfish bowl” of the training college campus in England, and because this had been my first significant loss, I did not know how to handle it, so I stifled my grief for a whole year. But on that Easter Sunday morning, when I took flowers to place at my father's grave, I had an incredible experience of the risen Lord being present with me, and I felt a great surge of new spring-like life within me. A surge that I feel again even as I type these words.

Every year since that incredible “Easter morning of my soul,” I have sought to do all I can to prepare myself to walk as nearly as I dare with my Lord through the agony of body, heart and mind of Gethsemane, the trial, the Via Dolorosa and Calvary. That means clearing away (dare I say, with a measure of joyful abandon) any recent clutter in my life; daring first to look at the spiritual cobwebs that the sunlight of God's springtime brings to life, then bending low enough in his presence to be able to see the weeds growing in “the garden of my heart.” And out of that inner spring-cleaning, I allow his truth to penetrate deeply into those areas of my spiritual life that need to be revitalized. Why? Because in my heart of hearts I believe Jesus' promise that, if I will only let it, the light of his truth will set me free from anything that will hamper me growing more and more into his likeness.

That's why that somewhat cheesy phrase came so readily to mind. Cheesy or not, I invite you to join with me, even now, though we are well on the way through the Lenten season, in preparing to “Let Easter Nurture Truth.”

Colonel Gwenyth Redhead is a retired Salvation Army officer. She and her husband, Robert, have held a wide variety of appointments in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. However, her passion has always been to encourage others in creative responses to God through writing of scripts, stories, articles and lyrics (mostly to Robert's music). She has two daughters, Joanne and Corinne, and rejoices that they, too, use the creativity God has given them in ministry.