By The Rev Paul Summers, assistant priest, St Peter’s Church, Addingham

THE trouble with Lent is that it always comes over as a miserable time, as a time of giving up, of going without. Perhaps you have given something up, or perhaps not. I wonder if you’ve thought why you give up. Maybe it goes back to your childhood or perhaps even school days.

I remember some years ago sitting at the tea table with my wife and two sons. We were suggesting and discussing what we’d give up for this period we call Lent. I can’t remember what we all said, apart, that is, from my eldest boy’s contribution: “I’m giving up mashed potato.”

“But Michael,” said his mum, “you don’t like mashed potato.”

“I know,” he answered, “so it won’t be too difficult for me and I don’t think I’ll fail like you all giving up chocolate or alcohol.”

I’m not sure he’d grasped this giving-up idea quite yet.

We’re probably in the same situation in our 30s, our 40s, our 50s or our 60s and more. What are we doing by giving up? I wondered for many years. Some hope their giving up might lead to weight loss, others to a saving in the household budget or pocket money.

But giving up, I was taught, focused on the deprivation of going without and helped us in sharing with Jesus in His giving up in the wilderness.

Over the years I hope I’ve realised that Lent isn’t a time for just giving up. Yes it’s a time for being with Jesus. In the wilderness he was coming to terms with God’s expectation of Him, he was looking towards the awfulness of the cross. This surely is why we keep Lent as a time of preparation for what we know as Good Friday. But as those who’s understanding of Lent know, it doesn’t end with the awfulness of the cross but with the triumph of Easter.

So what then should we be giving during this period we call Lent? I’d suggest time to God as we reflect on what the Church calls the Passion, that is the suffering and death of Jesus so that on Easter Day we can like Him, rise into the glory of his resurrection.

So if I might suggest a more meaningful way of keeping this season we know as Lent, how about taking your Bible off the shelf, deciding, if you can, what your favourite Gospel is and during this Lent reading it, and taking time to just sit and reflect on what you’ve read, and what God may be saying to you.