By John Pierce
Here we go again: Stomping and stumbling our way through Lent. Choosing the rocky, rugged, narrow path of introspection and confession.
Why? For one, we know where it all leads. But doing it all again also brings about some unexpected results.
It’s a strange and lacking comparison. But I thought recently about the Sunday afternoon in 1999 when Toy Story 2 hit the theaters.
My daughter Meredith (now a senior at the University of Georgia) was 6 years old at the time. So we settled into the comfortable seats — with snacks in hand — at the movie theater in Alpharetta, Ga., near our home.
We were captured by the story and the shared experience.
When the next Sunday afternoon rolled around, Meredith had a request: “Let’s do it again.”
So we went to the same showing of the same movie and even shared the same snacks as the week before.
The whole experience was just as wonderful the second time around — and I picked up on a few things I’d missed the first time.
Lent is not like entertainment — in most ways. But it can involve intentional repetition in hopes of seeing something that has been overlooked in the past.
It involves being captured by a shared story and experience — no matter how many times we’ve been down the path before.
So here we go again.
Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and former executive editor and publisher at Good Faith Media.