This is Lent. Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, and maybe even some Methodists knew how to spell it and what it meant long before us Baptists and Pentecostals knew anything about it. We knew what rent was. We paid it to the Episcopalians for a long time before we knew we could own property too. We knew what a tent was because we slept in one during the great wars, Korea, and Vietnam. We knew what a vent was because our homes had one to allow noxious fumes to escape. We even knew what a dent was because our pre-owned cars had plenty of them when we bought them only to pay them on time.

But, Lent? You see, we knew the big ones. We knew Christmas and Easter. And that's about all. Christmas was the time you got gifts and Easter was the time you dressed up in a new suit of clothes. Of course, I bet you can guess which holiday was the most popular. Somewhere along the learning curve, someone slipped a Palm Sunday in there, that's the Sunday before Easter. Then, someone told us that between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday there was a day called Maundy Thursday, not just Thursday, but Maundy Thursday. That was the day Jesus ate with his disciples for the last time in his pre-Easter clothes.

But if you keep hanging around what's called Liturgical Christians, you learn that you should start celebrating Christmas a good four weeks before December 25 and that four week period is called Advent. It made sense to me. If the department stores can start celebrating Christmas right after Halloween, what's to keep the church from celebrating it a little early too!

But I digress.