“Sugar or chocolate - chocolate or sugar - which one should I give up this year?”

The Christian season of Lent began on Ash Wednesday and, as Mothering Sunday approaches, we are over halfway through. While fewer people attend church these days, there is still a cultural understanding that Lent is something to do with giving things up. But what is it really all about?

The origins of Lent lie in the Early Church’s practice of preparing candidates for baptism at Easter. This process eventually became formalised into a period of forty days to correspond with the time that Christ spent in the wilderness prior to beginning his active ministry. Although baptisms now take place throughout the year, this season of preparation has continued and it provides us all with the opportunity to take stock of our lives. It seems such a shame, therefore, that Lent has become trivialised as a time to merely review our eating habits.

How might Lent be used more profitably? In the fourth century Asterius said that fasting ensured that the “stomach would not make the body boil like a kettle to the hindrance of the soul.” In other words, the reason we give up things, that are generally considered good for us, is in order to make space for those things that are essential to our whole person - spiritual as well as physical. For some of us giving up certain foods may well be a way of taking control of our bodily drives instead of them controlling us. For others food may not be the issue. Perhaps we need to fast from the relentless noise of TV and enjoy the silence for a while. Some of us probably need to reduce our intake of social media and give the people around us our undivided attention. Or maybe it’s time to give up some of our unceasing activity and take a stroll on the moors.

In the end, Lent is about making space for God in our lives; it is about putting aside those things that hinder our relationship with him and opening our hearts afresh to his presence. Only this way do our lives take on the purpose and meaning he intends for us and only this way do we experience the wholeness of life we long for.