Photo by Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash
Lent is one of the most beautiful seasons of the church, but unfortunately it kinda gets a bad rap of being all about 'missing out on stuff.'
Starting on Ash Wednesday and finishing on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter), Lent is about preparing for the massively important time of Easter – the time Jesus stepped in for us and takes the weight of our stuff-ups. You might have heard people talking about giving up things for the 40 days of Lent (not including Sundays – the Sabbath day), not eating meat on certain days, and hardly eating anything at all on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. This serves a few purposes, but primarily it’s about realising the things that have distracted us from God and his plan for us and turning our hearts and minds back to focus on Him!
As Pope Francis continues to capture hearts around the world with his simple message of LOVE and SERVE all, especially the weakest and poorest, we think it makes a lot of sense to use Lent to focus on GIVING OUT instead of GIVING UP. Every day of Lent this year we're gonna look for ways to GIVE OUT God’s untamable love, not just to serve others, but to help US remember how much Jesus gave out for us, and refocus on the simple call that God has for our lives.
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms-
- 1 Peter 4:8-10