Five Family-Friendly Resources for Lent
A few books, guides, and prayer cards to teach kids about Lent
It’s one thing to observe Lent by yourself. It’s another thing to try to observe it with your family, especially if your family includes fussy babies, grumpy middle schoolers, or fantastically busy teenagers. For certain parents, every day, in fact, feels like Lent. As a mom or dad, you’re laying down your life every day or giving up things that you love. So when Ash Wednesday comes around, what do you give up when you already feel utterly spent?
My wife and I have felt all these things in some fashion with our two children and have been deeply grateful to discover resources that others have created in order to help families who wish to follow Jesus on this 40-day pilgrimage. The following five resources, which include books, downloadable apps, and creative devotionals, offer families a starting point to practice Lent together.
Lenten Survival Guide for Kids: I’m Supposed to Do What?! by Peter Celano (Paraclete Press, 2014).
Written for elementary and middle school-aged children, this playful guide aims to help kids understand why they should care about a terribly big word that adults frequently take awfully seriously: Lent. Without talking down to them, Celano, an editor at Paraclete Press, offers children a chance to learn about such things as “What Lent Is,” “What Lent Definitely Is Not,” “40 Days of Survival Tactics,” and “A Few Prayers and Practices—Only for Kids.”
As Celano explains in this book, Lent is not about “giving up” silly things or about making sad faces to show how difficult life has suddenly become. It’s about learning to love God and to know who Jesus is and what it means to follow him—even as a kid. With Scriptures to memorize and prayers to say, Celano’s book is a wonderful opportunity for young children to embrace the season of Lent for themselves and not because, as many mothers and fathers may have uttered at some point, “I said so.”
Lent in Plain Sight: A Devotion through Ten Objectsby Jill J. Duffield (Westminster John Knox, 2020).
In this short but sweet book about the ordinary things that Jesus would have encountered on his way to Jerusalem, author Jill Duffield suggests that God delights to work through the ordinary objects we encounter in our lives. Through a series of reflections on Scripture, Duffield explores Jesus’ final days by way of dust, bread, the cross, coins, shoes, oil, coats, towels, thorns, and stones. Each week, running from Ash Wednesday to Easter, she shows us how God’s grace becomes tangible in the mundane things of our lives.
While this book isn’t written specifically for families, it holds great promise for children who wonder, for example, about the ways that dust might become more than something that collects under our beds, and that ash might represent something greater than simply the leftovers of a fireplace. They can function as signs of our mortality and as symbols of the things God uses to reveal his glory in the world. The ideal family for this hand-sized book is probably those with junior high and high school kids, though small children might enjoy looking at and talking about the illustrations, too.
Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss (author) and David G. Klein (illustrator) (Paraclete Press, 2020).
If Lent is an invitation to participate in the sufferings of Christ, as Gayle Boss writes, then that invitation extends to all of creation, inasmuch as Christ has died to redeem the whole world. Our journey through Christ’s passion, she argues, ought to give voice not only to our own groanings but also to the groanings of creatures who suffer the “pains of childbirth” together with us (Rom. 8:22). This includes endangered animals such as Chinese Pangolins, Polar Bears, Giant River Otters, Hawksbill Turtles, and Amur Leopards.
The delight in reading about these creatures, and the sadness that comes from realizing that they are endangered, naturally leads to confession as we realize the ways that we have done a poor job of caring for God’s earth and its inhabitants. The hope that runs through the heart of Lent, however, reminds us that God’s new creation life is not just for us but for all the things that he has made. In Boss’s words, “Lent is seeded with resurrection,” and her hope is that these stories might help us to perceive how new life arises from death and ruin, precisely because God is at work to renew all of creation.
Beautifully illustrated by the artist David Klein, the book’s stories are sure to engage the imaginations of children of all ages, but especially those who are over 5. The stories are short enough to read out loud and would make for marvelous conversation at the breakfast table or at night before bedtime. Since it’s only four stories a week, it also leaves plenty of room to miss or skip a day or two.
Little Way Lent Guide 2025.
This guide, created by Alissa Case of Chapel of the Little Way, is designed to help make Lent eminently doable for families. As Alissa explains the guide: “Imagine how beautiful it would be to spend 40 days establishing gentle and joyful rhythms of prayer, fasting, and giving with your family—practices that will last far beyond the Lenten season. The Little Way Lent guide for families takes the guesswork out of Lent, giving you one simple practice per day to do as a family. It also includes loads more if you want to dive deeper:
A history of Lent
An overview of the “three pillars of Lent”: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
A guide for kicking off Lent on Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras)
A lesson introducing Lent to children
A printable card for each day of Lent with a simple spiritual practice to deepen your family’s Lenten journey. Each practice draws from one of the three traditional pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting or Giving
Detailed notes for daily practices, explaining the history and theology behind it
Prayer card prints
Open and Unafraid: Illustrated Prayer Cards from the Psalms.
Phaedra and I created this set of illustrated Psalms Prayer Cards to help folks pray in light of the Book of Psalms. Each 4X6 card includes an image on one side, corresponding to a specific chapter in my book, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life (Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins: 2020), and text on the other: a passage from the psalms, three questions for reflection, and an original prayer.
Each original watercolor illustration corresponds to a specific theme in the psalms, and the text on the back offers an opportunity to reflect on one’s life in the light of the good news that we discover in the psalms. While both individuals and communities could use them as aids to prayer, we think that families might find these cards especially useful as conversation-starters around meal times, bed times, or other free times.
The images are easily accessible to children and could function as starting points for a discussion of themes that tie directly to the season of Lent—themes such as honesty and community, sadness and anger, enemies and justice, life and death, nations and creation. The questions can also be modified to age-appropriate levels, and the final prayer could serve as a prompts for more extemporaneous prayers.
You can purchase this set of prayer cards at The Rabbit Room Store.
(This piece originally appeared in Christianity Today, but I’ve updated it in light of changes to some of the above resources. You can also read my other CT essay on Lent at here.)
