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Lenten Calendar Templates 2018

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Using a calendar template is one of my favorite ways to keep a daily discipline during Lent.  The discipline can take three minutes or thirty. What matters is the daily regimen of participation and presence.

Each day I choose a word to ponder or a person to pray for. I write the word or name in the allotted space and draw or doodle around it. If words come to me as I draw I pray them. If not, I stay quiet. Returning to the calendar each day helps me to create a hallowed place where I can be present to God and listen. Each mark or stroke of color is a small movement prayer. It is a one day at a time, visual and kinesthetic way to have a Lenten practice.

The accumulation of words or peoples’ names is a visual tapestry of my mini spiritual journey through the forty-plus days of Lent.

Below are four templates to choose from in jpg or pdf form. Each calendar has 46 spaces which include Sundays. (Officially Sundays are not a part of the 40 days of Lent. So feel free to do something special for the Sundays, if you like–or leave the spaces empty.) On the Cross Calendar, the spaces on the cross itself are part of the 46 count. The traditional Box calendar is dated; the Tears template suggests a path to follow. The other two allow you to move around and choose the space you want to use on a given day. Date them as you go. Since the spaces are small I take the template to a copier and enlarge it (129%-132%) onto an 11″x17″ piece of card stock. Staying inside the lines is not a requirement! Add words or draw around the designated spaces.

Children can mark the daily walk through Lent with the calendars, also.

This is an example of a calendar from 2017. It includes the original blank template  on the left (also available this year), the first few days of one calendar, and another finished version. Words on the third version came from daily meditations by Walter Brueggemann in his book: A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent.Here are some ways to use the calendars:
1) Pray for a person each day of Lent.
2) Use a daily book of Lenten meditations. Read the mediation for the day and select a word that jumps out at you. Meditate on the word as you draw and color around it. Let it enter your heart and mind. Ask God what you need to hear from the word.
3) Follow a daily lectionary and choose a word from one of the Scripture readings.
4) Read the same Psalm each day and choose a daily word. Psalm 51, for example, is a penitential Psalm with lots of juicy (sometimes depressing) words in it.
5) Read a different Psalm each day and choose a word.
6) Use nouns or adjectives that describe the nature and character of Jesus: savior, redeemer, healer, radical, obedient, forgiving,…
7) Since Lent is a time for reflection and self-examination, scatter your confessions, character defects, regrets, worries, dreams, sorrows, and hopes around the Cross template one day at a time.
8) The Tears template provides space above the line at the top to mark the arrival of Easter. Write the word Easter and/or use words or a drawing/doodle in the space to reflect the mood of the passage from Revelation 21:4 (NRSV) “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.”

  Tears .jpg or .pdf  Cross .jpg or .pdf  Box .jpg or .pdf  Lily .jpg or .pdf

Click on .jpg or .pdf below the desired template. Make sure to download the template with the downward facing arrow in the top right before you print. These are also available on the Handouts Page on this website.

Glimpse of Heaven

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Heaven does not occupy my thoughts very often. I figure if I’m doing my best to listen to God’s call now, everything will fall into place after I leave this mortal life. Minding my present day business is work enough.

Most descriptions of heaven from authors, speakers, acquaintances and friends don’t interest me very much: streets of gold, women in long flowing pastel dresses, endless family reunions in beautiful parks, calorie-less hamburgers, billions of people worshiping together for eternity…. I dislike pastels and billions of people doing anything together is an introvert’s idea of hell. I guess I suffer from some serious lack of celestial imagination and curiosity.

The other day on a 3-hour flight from Salt Lake City to Memphis I did have my first, tiny foretaste of heavenliness. It was 5:30 Mountain Time. In the lottery of frequent fliers I had lucked out with seat 1A. A hot washcloth appeared on my tray table along with a linen place mat and a chicken pasta salad. It was like eating in a revolving, skyscraper restaurant, only higher up. It was not just the experience of dining at 35,000 feet that was heavenly. It was the feeling I had looking at the mountains and desert bathed in exquisite light and color. I was overcome with awe and delight. It was a feeling I could live with for eternity.

I’m no closer to a physical or tangible description of what heaven might LOOK like, but I think I have an inkling of what it will FEEL like. When “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” and “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4 NIV), every particle of my being will pulse with perennial awe and irrepressible delight.