{"id":259,"date":"2023-04-09T21:31:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-09T21:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/104.193.40.20\/greggfriend-wp\/?p=259"},"modified":"2026-02-08T21:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:31:57","slug":"lent-the-season-of-repentance-and-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"357\" height=\"499\" src=\"http:\/\/104.193.40.20\/greggfriend-wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-30.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-260\" srcset=\"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-30.png 357w, https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-30-215x300.png 215w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 357px) 100vw, 357px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past several years, I have begun to observe a time of reflection during the Lenten season. Some years, I &#8220;give up&#8221; something so that the desire of missing it reminds me to reflect. Some years, I take on lawn chores on every Saturday during Lent to remind me of &#8220;the curse.&#8221; Most years, I dedicate the time to reading some book that helps me reflect on the season. This year, i chose to read two books. The first book was <em>Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal<\/em> by Esau McCaulley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This short book of just over 100 pages is the first book of the <em>Fullness of Time<\/em> series of books. The plan is to publish a book for each major season of the ancient church liturgical year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many American Evangelical churches have their own modern liturgical year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Stewardship Sunday,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Easter,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mother&#8217;s Day,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Graduation season,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Memorial Day,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>July 4th Sunday,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New School\/Ministry season,<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Thanksgiving season and<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Christmas season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Most American Evangelicals are ignorant or confused about the ancient church liturgical year. Some even fear or disdain it because it seems too Roman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A day or so before Ash Wednesday, which starts the Lenten season, I read a Facebook post by a Baptist pastor analyzing the season of Lent. The Lent described in this post was based upon a popular, outsider view of the season. So much of the post was not close to reality. It was similar to what we see at Easter and Christmas when non-Christian journalists try to describe those holidays. This is another example of why I like books that let the proponents describe their perspective instead of books that have antagonists describe what they think the proponent&#8217;s perspective is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I first became familiar with Esau, the author of this book and the editor of the series, on the <em>The<\/em> <em>Disrupters <\/em>podcast. At first, I was taken aback by some of the things he said from his perspective. As I listened more and more, I was more and more convicted that Esau was exposing my prejudices. I have come to enjoy reading and listening to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This book lays out the real understanding of Lent from the ancient traditions. I would highly recommend this book to really understand the season of Lent. I have already added the rest of the series to my Amazon wish list. I was able to get this Lent book for free for being a subscriber to the <em>Holy Post Book Club<\/em>. The list price of each of these books are about $20 to pre-order. I do not know what will happen to the other books as they are published, but it seems that now the Lent book is $5 cheaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past several years, I have begun to observe a time of reflection during the Lenten season. Some years, I &#8220;give up&#8221; something so that the desire of missing it reminds me to reflect. Some years, I take on lawn chores on every Saturday during Lent to remind me of &#8220;the curse.&#8221; Most years, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greggfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}