Lent ideas for adults: add something instead of giving up

Because a removal leaves a gap, and gaps fill with whatever is nearest, usually a phone. The tradition never meant fasting to stand alone: Jesus names three practices together in Matthew 6, giving, praying and fasting. Subtract something without adding anything and you keep only a third of Lent.

Early Christian preachers made the point again and again. A fast that frees up money should go to the poor, and a fast that frees up time should go to prayer, or it is just a diet with a liturgical calendar.

So swap like for like. If you give up twenty minutes of evening scrolling, decide now what those twenty minutes become. The rest of this guide is one answer to that question, with a plan you can start on Ash Wednesday.

The most complete Lenten practice is also the simplest: follow the life of Jesus in order, one scene at a time, and arrive at the empty tomb on Easter morning. Our life of Jesus coloring book gives you that route in 33 illustrated scenes, each with a short dated caption to read first.

Read the caption, then color. The caption sets the scene, Nazareth under Roman occupation, a fishing boat on Galilee, an upper room at Passover, and the coloring keeps you inside it for twenty minutes instead of the thirty seconds a verse usually gets.

It suits Lent practically, too. It arrives as an instant PDF download, so you can print the first week’s pages on Shrove Tuesday evening. Reprint any page if a session goes wrong, and use whatever you have: pencils, fine markers, watercolor or a tablet.

Prefer to start further back? The Holy Bible title walks from the Garden of Eden to the Resurrection, which suits a slower Lent spread across both Testaments. Every illustration in both books is checked by a person before it goes in. Human Validated, no melting hands.

Lent 2027 begins on Ash Wednesday, February 10, and ends at Easter on March 28. Color about four scenes a week through the infancy and Galilee, slow down in Holy Week, leave Holy Saturday blank and finish at the empty tomb on Easter morning. The last page waits for Ascension Day.

Sundays are your margin. In the Western count the forty days of Lent skip Sundays, so use them to catch up on a missed scene or simply to look back over the week’s pages.

One adjustment if you follow the Sunday readings: the Gospel on the first Sunday of Lent is always the temptation in the desert. Color that page early, on February 14, then pick the sequence back up the next day.

Orthodox Christians start later. Great Lent in 2027 begins on Clean Monday, March 15, with Pascha on May 2, so spread the same pages across the seven weeks from that date.

Coloring holds your attention on one scene far longer than reading does, without asking you to produce words. That puts it close to two old Christian ways of praying with the imagination: lectio divina, or slow reading, and the Gospel contemplation Ignatius of Loyola taught, where you place yourself inside the scene.

In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius asks you to see the persons, hear what they say and consider what they do. A coloring page does the seeing for you and then keeps you there: the grain of the boat, the faces in the crowd, the dust on the road into Jerusalem.

There is a practical case too. Your hands are busy, so your phone is out of reach, which is the very habit most people are trying to break. And one concrete fact a day sticks better when your hands are working, for reasons we cover in learning history through coloring.

Coloring is not prayer by itself. Treat it as the setting: read the caption, read the Gospel passage behind it if you can, then color in silence or with one line you keep returning to.

Use the coloring as the backbone and hang the three traditional practices on it. Fast from the screen time it replaces, pray with the scene before you start, and give away whatever your fast saves. On Fridays, many Christians add the Stations of the Cross alongside the week’s pages.

The same plan works for one person or a whole household. Alone, keep it to twenty quiet minutes after dinner. As a couple, color the same scene separately and compare at the weekend. With children, print the page twice, because one file covers your household and every page reprints as often as you need.

For teenagers, let them pick the medium: fine-liners, markers and tablets are all fair game. If they ask why Jesus looks the way he does on the page, our piece on what Jesus really looked like is a good place to start that conversation.

Keep a folder for the finished pages. By Easter Sunday you have more than thirty colored scenes, the whole of Lent in one stack, and it makes a better centerpiece for the Easter table than another chocolate egg.

If coloring isn’t your practice, keep the same principle: add something with a shape and an end date. Read one Gospel straight through, write one letter a week, pray the Stations on Fridays, add a weekday service or visit someone who lives alone. Pick one, not five.

Avoid stacking them. Five new habits on Ash Wednesday become none by the third week, while one practice done daily carries you all the way to Easter.

Give it before Ash Wednesday, not at Easter. Print the first week’s pages, put them in a folder with a card that names the plan, and hand it over on Shrove Tuesday, February 9, 2027. The person you are giving it to starts the next day and finishes on Easter morning.

For printing, folding and wrapping a download so it arrives as an object, see how to gift a printable. For matching a faith gift to the person, our guide to Christian gifts that aren’t cheesy covers tradition and occasion.

Prefer a bound book? The paperback edition is on Amazon, but order it early. When the start date is fixed, shipping time matters.

The questions people ask most before Ash Wednesday, answered straight.

A Lent of pure subtraction ends in relief: you can have the chocolate again. A Lent with a practice ends in arrival, because you have walked from Nazareth to the empty tomb and you have thirty-odd pages to show for it.

Print the first week’s pages before Ash Wednesday, clear twenty minutes in the evening, and start with the prophecy. With the Jesus Christ coloring book, your Lent is planned before it begins.