There are some books that are just perfect for the fall. I think The Hobbit is one of them, but I think that any new book or old favorite is just begging to be read during the fall. There’s something about the weather that just sets the tone for curling up on the couch or in a comfy chair, maybe with a blanket and some tea or coffee, and digging into a good book. Summer is for breezy reads, winter is for thick novels, but the autumn is for books that feed the soul.

Lent is for the same thing, though you may not have experienced the season like that. Most of the time, we think of Lent as a time of penitence, or when we give up something we really like, or when we take on a practice that we know is good for us but that we assume (or hope) that will bring us closer to God. Lent is decidedly not a time to curl up on the couch, maybe with a blanket, sip some nice, warm coffee, and dig into a good pleasure read. Or maybe it is, and we’re thinking about Lent wrong.

Lent is a time when we get close to God. It always falls in the spring, or sometimes the end of winter, a time of renewal and rebirth. It’s an “open up the windows and let the fresh air come in after all that winter closed up inside” kind of season. In Lent we prepare for Easter, which is the great “opening up” of our hearts to the continued reality that God is here and risen and present and awesome.

Autumn, on the other hand, is the secret holy time. I keep on hearing people say that the fall is their favorite season, and when I ask them why, they get this look on their faces that is like the freshness and newness of spring but wrapped up in a turtle-neck sweater. And they talk about how it’s cool in the morning and evening but warm during the day, and that the sun is bright but not too bright, and how they like to go on walks or bike rides. People enjoy things more fully in autumn, and the things that they enjoy aren’t surface things but things with great depth – like reading a good book, a new one or an old favorite. People drink tea more slowly during the autumn. They pause more during the fall. They go and pick apples, which is a crazy thing to do because you could just as well get them from the store, but there’s something about autumn that makes you want to go out to where the apple trees are and climb a ladder maybe and pull an apple from the tree itself so you can take a nice, thick, juicy bite of it right then and there.

Lent is also for loving good things. It’s not supposed to be about drudgery, though it can be hard, just as hard as taking a trip out to an orchard to pick apples instead of just getting them from the supermarket. Lent is about slowing down and loving the things of God just like people slow down and watch the wind blow through the trees in the fall. Lent is about finding the secret hiddenness of God and allowing it to remain hidden instead of shouting it from the rooftops because there’s something precious about how God hides in little things like falling leaves or little rainstorms or something that seems so inconsequential like leaves changing color. And maybe it all is inconsequential and that’s the point, because none of it speaks to the troubles of the world or the news, local or from afar, but it speaks only of leaves and the color of the sky and the smell of the wind, where God likes to sit and look at humanity and just love us so very much.

Lent is not, of course, during the fall, and there’s too much great symbolism (and historical weight) to try and change when we celebrate Lent and Easter, but I think it’s important to recognize how our thoughts about God change with the season. God never changes, but the world around us (which changes quite frequently) changes how we approach God. Which is a really beautiful thing, isn’t it? It’s like looking out into our back yards and noticing how it’s different in the morning and in the evening, and how both of them are still your back yard, but that you can appreciate it and love it differently, and therefore more greatly, if you can appreciate it at all times.

Let us love God more fully whenever and however God comes to us!