The current world situation has a number of parallels with the annual period of reflection that is Lent.

Ready?

As we get near to Lent, we also seem to be getting close to war.  Our screens are filled with images of elderly national leaders looking grave, and of young men and women looking determined.

They are fit, trained, uniformed, armed, ready.  They are practising in desert conditions, or boarding ships and planes, leaving anxious families behind.  They will do whatever they have to do and take the consequences, for others and for themselves.

That is what war requires.

It also the kind of thing that living the Christian faith requires, since that too involves what Bunyan called a Holy War.  There is a kingdom to be secured, its values to be defended, and its ways to be established. There is an enemy to be defeated, his prisoners to be released, and his victims to be reclaimed.  There is a call to be obeyed, and a Leader to be followed.

It is a situation to be taken just as seriously as the international one.  It calls for just as high a degree of readiness and it promises just as significant a sacrifice.

That is what Lent acknowledges, and what it offers.  Through its worship and its self-denial, we can walk with our Leader on his path from his first to his final battle.

We can prepare ourselves for outward struggle by engaging in inward struggle, and train our hearts to taste both the cost and the victory of our calling and of his cross.

Our armed forces may yet be recalled.  Perhaps it won't be war this time and, if it isn't, that will be, in part, because of principled and perhaps costly opposition, including opposition by Christians.

But there is no recall from spiritual warfare; no going back on the believer's first covenant with his/her Lord.  So Lent comes round every year - this year, this month and next - to give us another chance to be ready, willing and able for the fight that really matters.

It is a hard six weeks, but not lonely.  And even Thomas managed to say, 'Let us go with him...'

      Brian Tucker.