The season of Lent official started on Ash Wednesday, two days ago. Lent is a season where we prepare our hearts and our minds to enter into the wonderful Mystery of Easter. It’s a reflective season that often includes taking on or giving up certain practices to help us focus on our faith and relationship with God. It’s an important season, but it’s also one that can get easily get swallowed up by an early jump into Easter. With a little intentionality, however, it can be a meaningful experience for families to walk through together
But if you’re like me, these opportunities for intentionality *always* sneak up on you. It isn’t that you didn’t know the beginng of Lent was around the corner. It’s just that work and school and laundry and someone always being sick because it’s winter ALSO happened, and all of your good plans to pull together a family practice slipped away in the craziness of your ordinary life and, well, now Lent is here and you never actually got anything prepared. And now it feels like it’s too late.
It’s not too late.
No, seriously, hear me: IT’S NOT TOO LATE!
I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone, because I struggle with this, too. I LOVE a fresh start from what feels like a natural (or an actual) beginning, but my goal for this year is to not let perfection be the enemy of the good. My choices are not do something perfectly or to not do it at all.
That means you CAN start your Advent readings on December 4th. You CAN create charitable giving goals in February (or March, or July!). You CAN start regularly attending church, or the gym, or that community action group in April, even though you meant to start going on January 1. And you can DEFINITELY create a Lent & Easter countdown chain on the 3rd day or 2nd week of Lent (or on Good Friday!) and it’s all good.
Having a visual way for your family to journey through the season of Lent together can be extremely helpful for kids. The start date for Lent varies widely and other, more commercially notable holidays like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, often fall in the middle of it, making the season a little extra confusing for kids.
And because Lent itself has largely NOT been commercially co-opted (which is a good thing!) it also means that Lenten visuals are sometimes hard to come by. You probably aren’t going to find Lenten banners or window decorations at your local Target.
So a Lenten calendar (like this one or any of these!) or a paper countdown chain are easy ways to help mark the time of the connected Lent and Easter seasons.
Did I mention easy? You probably have most of these materials at your house right now. Basically all you need is paper and glue (or tape or staples work great/even better, too).
I created this paper chain for church using the supplies we had on hand in the craft supply closet. Yours can be fancier or simpler than mine.
The season of Lent is 40 days long lasting from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (Lent does not include Sundays in the counting of the 40 days. Obviously my chain does not have 40 links, but yours certainly can. I went for a quicker route and while some links represent specific holy days, most just represent a WEEK of the season.
Here’s how mine is constructed:
- Black link– Ash Wednesday
- 6 purple links–the 6 weeks of Lent (the traditional color for the season of Lent is purple)
- Black link–Good Friday (or Holy Week as a whole)
- 7 white links–the 7 weeks of the season of Easter
- Red Link-Pentecost Sunday
If you wanted to make a link for each chain you would need:
- Black link– Ash Wednesday
- 38 purple links–the days in Lent (could intersperse white links if you wanted to mark Sundays)
- 2 Black links-Good Friday and Holy Saturday
- 49 white links–the days in the season of Easter
- Red Link-Pentecost Sunday, the end and 50th day of Eastertide
The dove at the top is just my fancy chain holder and decoration. You could make yours a cross, a flower, a hand-lettered sign, or nothing at all.
I added a loop of string so I could easily hang the countdown chain.
That’s it! To visualize your journey through the seasons, simply tear off a link as each day/week passes or take a clothespin and move it to each link.
Want your countdown chain to help you or your family participate in Lent & Easter faith practices? Consider writing on each link (before you glue the chain together!) and then reading it as you remove each link.
Your links could contain:
- names of people, please or topics to pray for
- random acts of kindness to participate in
- Scripture passages or Bible stories to read together (like this one that uses the Jesus Storybook Bible)
- a small area of your house to declutter (with the intention to donate excess to charity!)
- a friend or family member to surprise with a note in the mail (or young kids could draw a picture)
But again, keep it simple. Something is better than nothing. You could always decide on the person to pray for each day and write his or her name on the link AFTER you remove it from the chain. (Or do the same with acts of kindness!) Keep the removed links in a jar or plastic bag and look back over them at the end of the season.
If you make a Lent and Easter countdown chain send me a pic! I’d love to add photos of additional examples to the end of this post!
(Want to do a family faith practice for Lent or Easter but this one just doesn’t appeal to you? Stay tuned. More ideas to come!)
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