What are you going to do for Lent?

Monday 21st February 2022 09:53

The bible says true fasting is “To share your food with the hungry, to provide the poor wanderer with shelter and to clothe the naked.” So what are you going to do for lent?

People often tell me they are going to give up chocolate so how about giving your chocolate to the foodbank? At St Lawrence’s throughout lent we are encouraging our members to donate one item a week to the foodbank. Yes, that includes tinned food and long life drinks and it also includes shampoo and shower gel.

The whole point of giving something up is to train ourselves in self discipline. For me giving up chocolate would be easy so I usually try to give up alcohol which is much harder! But if I can discipline myself to give up alcohol then I can probably discipline myself to arrive everywhere a couple of minutes early rather than a couple of minutes late.

I also like to take on a new spiritual discipline for lent. It might be simply going to church every week for 6 weeks or it might be reading Luke’s gospel every day or it might be writing our STOP prayers every day (STOP stands for Sorry, Thank you, Others, Please).

The aim is for us to use lent to strengthen our vertical relationship with God to keep it simple to keep it real and to keep it up.