My Season of Lent

Many Christian traditions celebrate the season of Lent, which is observed beginning on Ash Wednesday and spans 40 days until Easter.  While the Catholic Church is the most known for calling parishioners to sacrifice something during this time in order to deepen their focus on Christ, other denominations like Presbyterians and Lutherans also follow this tradition.

This is not a tradition that I grew up with and every year I find myself struggling to figure out what I’m going to “give up” because everyone else is talking about it.  This year our congregation was challenged to make a difference with your sacrifice.  If giving up chocolate, donate the money that you would have spent on chocolate to the soup kitchen.  If you sacrifice an activity, use the time to volunteer.

While discussing this year’s Lent season and batting around a few ideas, as a family we settled on minimizing our grocery budget as much as possible by eating meals that are stashed in the freezer and using the extra money (and time saved on cooking) to put together Hygiene Kits and Baby Kits for our denominational disaster assistance program.  I often feel convicted of how I spend my time, and was feeling this conviction when I came across Katie’s “What are you doing for Lent” post over at Kitchen Stewardship.  As I read the post my “what doing with your time” voice kept echoing in my head.  Then the first linked response on Forty Bags in Forty Days de-cluttering challenge caught my eye and was the catalyst that gelled in my heart what this year’s Lent season needs to be about for me: the spiritual disciplines of gratefulness and giving.

I strive to focus on being content and know that we have so much more than we need, but that does not turn into true gratefulness as often as it should. Rarely do I look around to see how much I really have and sometimes how little we actually use.  So over the course of the 40 days of Lent, 40 bags of various sizes (nothing smaller than a plastic shopping bag) will leave my house destined to be donated or recycled and I will daily strive to allow gratitude to fill my heart and life.

Would you like more ideas for observing the season of Lent in a unique way? Visit this Kitchen Stewardship post for ideas (scroll to the bottom of the post for link ups.)