Giving Up for Lent
What are you giving up for Lent? Are you giving up anything for Lent, and, if you are, how is it going after two and a half weeks?
My husband and I are giving up alcohol. We won’t touch a drop of the demon drink until Easter Day. We’ve done this for many years. I understand that other people in our congregations are abstaining from biscuits, chocolate, sugar and even television. Some say that you are ‘permitted’ to indulge on Mothering Sunday, on all Sundays during Lent or even all weekends, but who gives that permission? Ask that and you find yourself asking further questions, about the meaning and purpose of ‘giving up for Lent’.
I’m sure that going without alcohol is doing our health and our weight a power of good, but what’s that got to do with Lent? Giving up ‘(the Lenten Promise) is supposed to be about recommitting ourselves to Jesus by turning away from sin. Lent is, after all, a season of repentance. But, over the years, our traditions have commuted ‘sin’ – a serious matter, which we should turn away from permanently and seek God’s forgiveness - for minor indulgences, which we can do without for forty days and forty nights.
I am seriously questioning why I’m giving up alcohol, as it were on autopilot. Although Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights, nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to fast or make sacrifices for Lent. God is not keen on sacrifices. In Hosea 6.6, He tells us
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Our love is what He needs, not our outward abstinences.
I’ve come around to the view that, in Lent, we should do something, rather than give up something. A few days into Lent, we saw a charity advertisement in the Christian women’s magazine, Woman Alive, for World Vision, a charity which supports and protects vulnerable children overseas. We have decided to use the money we will save on wine to enable a child to choose us as his/her sponsor, this being the way World Vision works.
This advertisement quotes Isaiah 58:5:
Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen; to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Rosemary Johnson
Member of congregation at St Andrew’s, Earls Colne
Are you a member of the congregation at St Andrew’s, Earls Colne, Cone Engaine or White Colne? Would you like to write our next Colne Churches blog post? Please contact Rosemary at 3colneswebmanager@gmail.com
