Byrnesys Blabberings

As Andrew (tallSkinnyKiwi) says us protestants really struggle to present any type of depth to the concept of lent due to our denominational "pendulem like" swings away from the so called "Yuk Yuk Liturgy, let just read 3:16 and get on with it" attitude which has dominated the reformed wing, but those in the more traditional setting like Maggi Dawn have summed it up well here and here.

We do spend a lot of money on food in our culture, but it might capture the Lent tradition better by looking at the stuff we buy - lots and lots and lots of consumer goods, disposable stuff with a limited capacity for bringing joy and benefit to our lives. It’s a revelation to stop from time to time, and look at how much stuff is in your house that you have only used once or twice, thought you wanted really badly but actually didn’t use that much. Lent is a good moment to re-think your relationship to stuff - Maggi Dawn, Lent Simplicity and Stuff

This is a really interesting insight to me, partly because Im very interested in cultural symbol that food was  in the time when the Bible was written, something that was so evocative to those who spent much of their days striving for food and for some always lacking in it, but to us in the west the denotion to food as a metaphor has lost alot of its weight, and is something we can maybe restore through engaging some African based theology which I mentioned here in my post on church in the global south.

I think Lent is really a time when we simplify in order to remember that the "things" in our lives whether it be food or material stuff can never take the place of Jesus, his faithfulness, they will never fill us in the way he can, and in part that Lent is a remembering, a physical act of giving up something to remember.