Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of another Lenten season. For those who don’t follow the church year calendar, Lent is a 40-day period (not counting Sundays) from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, a season of marking time, a countdown to Easter. People who give up something for this penitential season are certainly counting the days. You watch the clock, waiting for time to pass, maybe even marking the days off your calendar until it is over. Perhaps you suffer a little because of what you have given up, which is to be a reminder of how much Jesus suffered for you and all He endured to accomplish your salvation.

Lent is not mandated in Scripture. It is an observance developed in the history of the Church to assist us in reflecting on the death of our Lord and preparation to celebrate His Resurrection.

Remember that Old Testament 40-day period of waiting when it did not stop raining? Noah had an experience of watching and waiting. Even after the rains stopped, the water covered the entire earth. He and his family and the animals would be in the ark for a long time before it settled on dry land.

Life is filled with times of watching and waiting: for a child to be born, at the bedside of a loved one who is hospitalized, for a spouse to return from deployment. Those times come and those times go, but that is not all there is to life. I don’t imagine that Noah’s time on the ark was all work and gloom and drudgery. When I try to picture those eight folks together on the ark, they had to have done something. One author said he imagined them spending their evenings playing pinochle and telling stories and having sing-alongs! As bad as things were, they knew there was an end in sight. Eventually the time would be up, their current circumstances would be over, replaced by something better.

That is the message from God’s Word for you as well, involved as you are in this business of marking time, watching and waiting. You go through Lent to get to Easter! You go through life to get to heaven! You are assured of something better because of what Jesus did. You have God’s Word on it.

God made a promise to Noah: “Never again will you have to go through what you have been through. You have my word on that!” The rainbow was the sign that God keeps his Word. The colors of the rainbow can remind us of the promises God makes to us, too.

• Red for the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross to make us clean from every sin.
• Golden orange, a prelude of the untold riches that await us.
• Yellow, like the rising sun, promise of a new and better day.
• Green, the color of life, of things that live and grow.
• Blue, for heaven, cloudless when the storm is past.
• And purple, the traditional color of the Lent, the color of royalty, a reminder of what our Lord endured, the King of Kings once crowned with thorns and throned on the cross, to let God’s kingdom come.

Lent is a season for counting the time. It is not simply a season you have to endure, but a time to remember what Jesus was willing to do so that you could be forgiven. And as we go through this waiting period, we already know of the rainbow, the promise that we are moving toward Easter when the counting is all done. And the even greater promise of life everlasting earned for us by Christ through His death and resurrection.