Day Two: A Sorrow.
During Lent we trying adding things or giving things up to draw us closer to God. During this time the Young Adult group and Youth Ministry at Acton United Methodist Church are engaging in this time by doing the “7” Challenge. The “7” challenge is a challenge that came out of the book, “7: a mutiny against excess” by Jen Hatmaker, it is a 7 week challenge so it works great for Lent and during these weeks we focus on an area of excess. Last week was food and now this week is clothes so this week we have been dressing very simply to reflect on what it means to only have 1-2 outfits of clothes to wear and then through the process of this look at going through your clothes and giving some of them away.
Today was that day. I began to feel sorrow and somewhat embarrassed by all that I had while others had so much less than I. A majority of the world lives on one dollar a day and we are obsessed with having more and more. Recently I have also taking Financial Peace University with my wife and many people at Acton. Here is a statistic from the budgeting lesson we had:
“Automatic overdraft loans netted banks more than $29.5 billion last year.” —Time
29.5 million dollars in just overdraft fees.
We flushed down the toilet 29.5 billion dollars from being lazy.
There has also been an overarching rhetoric in this class of what would you do if you had no debt? Well, what could we do if we had no debt. No student loans, credit card bills, car loans or any loans of any kind? We could really change the priorities of the world. Or we could just keep going into debt and be lazy and give more of our banks more millions every year.
So during Lent where can we adjust our priorities?
What possessions do we have need and what do we want?
We are not alone in this world and sometimes I do think that we think we are, but maybe during Lent we think about ways to look around and see where needs are needed and ask God to help us help those that don’t have what we have.
Create in us a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within us.