Friday March 6th. – Lent 2009

An article by Frank    No Comments

This morning I just want to share a story with you about another persons Lent journey.

Yesterday I had the privilege of taking part in my first Compassion Day as a TEAR Fund staff member. I have been involved before as a radio announcer, but this had a whole different feel. What an honour it was to be part of a day where our sole aim was to get as many children sponsored as possible. We changed the lives of over 200 children and to every who sponsored a child, thank you.

During the day I had a chance to chat with a young man that I admire. For some time now he has been working for an organisation for nothing. Just recently he started to be paid for his services but instead of relishing finally having an income, he has decided to not use his first weeks of income across the period of Lent and is comitting to giving the money to TEAR Fund at the end of it in a lump sum payment for TEAR Fund to use as we deem best. That’s pretty big.

What especially touched me was the thought process that had gone into it and the sense of freedom he seemed to gain from making the decision to do such a thing. He had identified that he had become numb to the issues of the world and he didn’t like that. He wanted to care and so he decided to sacrifice his finances towards helping aleviate some of those issues and since making that decision he has been experience a huge sense of freedom, closeness to God and has a growing sense of care again.

I’m not telling you that story today in order to convince you to do something the same, his is a major sacrifice, but think about what he has done. He has drawn on the three central themes of Lent – fasting (he is giving up his income for a number of weeks), prayer (he has most certainly had to engage God in this) and giving (the sacrificed income is going to the work TEAR Fund engages in with the poorest of the poor.

How are you doing with your commitments to those three pillars of Lent? Are you feeling like they are shaping you? Have you stumbled and need to get up and keep moving forward? What has that journey looked like for you so far?