Choosing Life This Lent

The first days of Lent place a clear fork in the road before the heart. Moses names it without varnish: life and death, blessing and curse. Jesus names the path that leads through that choice: a daily cross, a willingness to lose in order to truly live. These readings are not about despair or grim religion; they are about the dignity of real freedom and the promise that God’s grace can make a person like a tree planted by water, steady and fruitful even in hard seasons. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

Choosing Life in a Culture of Options

“Choose life” is remarkably concrete. Ancient Israel faced the seduction of other gods; today, the alternatives have new names; success at any cost, constant distraction, the quiet idolatry of self-curation, resentment disguised as moral superiority. Many discover that none of these are neutral. Patterns of attention become patterns of worship. The heart eventually resembles what it adores.

Deuteronomy’s promise isn’t a vending machine guarantee; be good and nothing bad happens. It is a covenant vision: attune your life to God’s voice, and your soul will learn how to live in reality. It’s like a musician who practices scales; freedom grows, not shrinks, with fidelity. Lent is the Church’s wise insistence that the heart can be re-tuned. Not by white-knuckled effort alone, but by grace meeting our real choices; the small, practical ones made at kitchen tables, in traffic, under deadlines, and in the silence where no one sees.

The Tree by Water: Stability in a Fractured Age

Psalm 1 sketches a person not driven by the wind. In an age of endless scrolling and perpetual outrage, that image feels almost audacious: roots near running water, fruit in season, leaves that do not wither. The “law of the Lord” here is not a legal burden but a living stream; God’s self-disclosure, God’s wisdom, God’s steadfast presence. Meditation “day and night” is not an impossible standard; it is a re-patterning of attention. Five undistracted minutes with Scripture can begin to bend the mind toward hope. A short Psalm in the afternoon can catch the heart before anxiety decides the day. A whispered name of Jesus in the night watches can soften the grip of fear.

Fruit “in season” is also a mercy. Not every day is harvest. Some days are rooting days, some pruning, some simply enduring the weather. Yet near the stream, even unremarkable days are not wasted. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

The Daily Cross: Losing to Find

Jesus does not romanticize discipleship: the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, die, and be raised. He immediately turns this mystery into a path for others: deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow. This is not a summons to self-contempt. It is the refusal to let the small, frightened self be the sun around which everything else must orbit.

What does a “daily cross” look like now? For some, it is the tedium of honest work when shortcuts beckon. For others, the slow work of recovery, the humility of asking for help, the courage to keep therapy appointments. It can be caregiving that seems unseen, faithful parenting amid sleepless nights, the long obedience of forgiving someone who doesn’t apologize, or choosing integrity when reputation or advancement could be gained by compromise.

Denying oneself is not denying personhood. It is saying no to the impulses that undermine love, so that the true self; made in Christ; can breathe. It is the strange arithmetic of the Gospel: whoever clutches at life, loses it; whoever gives it away in love, finds it returned, deepened, and free.

“What profit” is there to gain the whole world and lose one’s very self? The question lands with a thud in a culture that can maximize almost anything except meaning. Lent invites a different calculus: not how much can be acquired, but how deeply can one belong; to God, to truth, to others.

Repentance as Re-storying the Heart

“Repent,” Jesus proclaims; “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repentance (metanoia) is more than behavior modification; it is a re-storying of the mind, a turning from the scripts that don’t save toward the God who does. It looks like:

• Prayer: honest, simple, consistent. A quiet seat, a small Psalm, a whispered “Speak, Lord.” Show up, even dry.
• Fasting: not performative deprivation, but clearing space. Maybe fewer late-night screens so morning prayer is possible. Maybe a meal skipped to remember the hungry; and then to feed them.
• Almsgiving: not tipping God, but joining Christ’s love for the poor. Redirect some discretionary spending toward concrete mercy: a food bank, a neighbor’s bill, a parish initiative, a refugee family.

Repentance also means repair. An overdue apology. A confession received humbly, the absolution welcomed as water for roots. A boundary drawn to end a pattern that corrodes love. The Kingdom is not far; it is near enough to touch. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

Practicing a Rule for Choosing Life

A few small, steady practices can make room for grace:

• Begin with a choice: “Lord, today I choose life in you. Guard my mind, guide my tongue, steady my steps.”
• Identify one idol you actually bow to; appearance, influence, control, speed; and adopt a counter-practice. If speed is the idol, walk more slowly and listen. If influence, do one hidden act of love.
• Carry the cross on purpose: name today’s likely cross before it finds you, and pre-offer it in love.
• Sit by the stream: 10 minutes with the Gospel, using slow reading and a simple response; “What word is for me today?”
• Tithe some attention: for every 30 minutes online, give five to prayer or quiet. Let attention become worship again.
• Give something that costs: money, presence, or time to someone unlikely to repay you.
• Close the day with an examen: where did I choose life? Where did I choose myself? Receive mercy. Start again.

Suffering with a Horizon

The prediction of the Passion ends with a promise: on the third day, raised. The cross is not spiritual masochism; it is the narrow door by which love passes into resurrection. Christian hope is not “it will all work out somehow,” but “He is risen,” and therefore nothing given in love is ever finally lost.

This hope does not erase grief, nor does it deny injustice. It insists that God can work even there; especially there. In Jesus, God has already entered the worst of human history and planted the seed of an unstealable future. That is why even relinquishment can be fruitful, like a grain of wheat buried long before the green shoot appears. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

The Road Before Us

Lent begins with a serious invitation and a gentle hand. Choose life. Take up the daily cross. Plant your roots by the stream. The world will keep promising quick profits and faster paths. But the Gospel proposes something truer: lose what cannot finally satisfy, and receive what cannot be taken. Consent to be loved into freedom.

If that sounds small, remember the tree. Roots do their quiet work before anyone sees fruit. Keep company with Christ in these days. In His shadow, even ordinary lives begin to look like courage. And courage, watered by grace, becomes joy.