Skip to main content

Writing for Lent 2025 - The Book of Matthew

I recently stumbled across a fascinating Youtube channel called IMBeggar. From their website:

“IMbeggar is about finding new, different, creative, positive, entertaining, hard-hitting, and most importantly, accessible ways to talk about God”

What draw my attention to this channel was a video about Lent. Here is a link to it:


Lent is a 40 day fast leading up to Easter weekend traditionally practiced by the Catholic and Orthodox church. Starting 46 days before Easter (the fast often excludes Sunday’s), and is intended as a time of preparation and focus before celebrating the Passion week of Jesus.

Something that I’ve been doing each year during Lent is writing out one of the Gospel narratives by hand. I call this “Writing for Lent”.

This is an interesting exercise as I am forced to slow down and take in every word from the Scriptures. If the 30 Day Bible Shred is a sprint, Writing for Lent is a slow stroll through the park. I can take in every little details and peice of literature design that I may have overlooked in the past.

Here are some things I’ve gotten out of doing Writing for Lent in the past.

What I’ve gotten out from this

Literature Links

Authors of the Bible will repreat phrases and words across the book of the Bible to communicate themes and ideas. If I only read short sections of the Bible here and there, then I’ll miss these links. Writing out the Bible makes these phrases a lot more obvious.

Character formation

Each of the Gospel’s contains stories of various characters. Although we don’t get a complete overview of their story, the Gospel’s authors do offer little hints of someones journey and getting to know the reality of Jesus. By taking the time to explore each person in the Gospel’s you can start to see how God was changing them.

Identity of Jesus

Another fascinating part of the Gospel’s is how they present the identity of Jesus. For example, the book of Mark shows that only a very small handful of people identified Jesus as the Son of God. Whereas the book of Luke makes it clear that various individuals come to realise the significance of Jesus in their own journey. This invites me to ensure I submit my own expectation of Jesus to the Scriptures.

Tips to doing this

This isn’t a difficult excercise, but as for any long term projects consistency is the key the success. Here are some helpful guidelines.

  1. This takes me about 20-30 minutes of writing per day. I am a very slow writer, but I also want to take my time going through each word too.

  2. Follow a plan. Each year I’ve organised a writing plan attempting to organise each day into a set amount of even writing. For this year I’ll be writing out the Book of Matthew. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, click here for a link to the plan.

  3. Get a good pen. I don’t do a lot of writing in my day to day life. I’ve found that using a cheap, think pen tends to cause cramps and discomfort. But if I have a thicker and better quality pen, the writing experience is a lot nicer.

This is a very different approach to the Scriptures, but one I pray will help you in our own journey of mapping out the Bible. Feel free to jump in and have a go!

Popular posts from this blog

30 Day Bible Shred 2025

The Bible Shred 2025 is coming up! Each year this is a personal challenge that many understake to read through the whole Bible (yes, the entire Bible) in 30 days. The goal is to: To overview the whole Bible. Try and get as much of the Scripture into your brain at the start of the year. But the Bible is a very big body of text, and 30 days is not a lot of time. Here are some of my favourite tips and suggestions that I’ve found have really helped me over the years that I’ve been doing this. 1) Find a format that is appropriate for your season of life The three primary formats for the Bible is a physical paper Bible, a digital Bible read through apps or ereaders, or audio Bibles. They all have their benefits and limitations, so its best to find an option that works for you that will help you accomplish your goal. Physical bibles often let you notice a lot more, but take dedicated time and space to read. If you have young kids or travel frequently, then this may not be the ...
Read more

Book Review: Fallen by Tim Chaffey

I’ve recently finished a book by Dr Tim Chaffey called “Fallen”. In it he explores just 4 verses in the Bible. You may be wondering how an entire book can be written on just 4 verses of the Bible - but these are some of the most misinterpreted and misunderstood verses of the Bible. They are found in Genesis 6:1-4 and go like this: “Genesis 6:1–4 (ESV) When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” If you’ve never read or seen this section of Genesis, then you are likely confused ...
Read more