Lent Focus # 6 A Deeper Look into Almsgiving
A Lenten Prayer (photo from St. Augustine, Florida)
While Ron and I were having our morning couple devotional time, my phone dinged, alerting me to a text message.
Checking a few minutes later, my first reaction was annoyance. The message created an inconvenient change of MY plans.
Inconsiderate! Yeah, that’s what this person was.
Funny coincidence (or perhaps not!) was the key verse in the devotional we’d just completed. Proverbs 27:19 said,
As a face is reflected in water,
so the heart reflects the real person.
My spirit said, “Ouch!” In a moment of clarity, I believe the Spirit of a caring God showed me that my heart had just reflected the “real” person that lurks within my soul when I react according to my desires rather than consider first God’s ways.
Yes, my initial reaction was self-centered, but thankfully, I did not remain in reaction-mode.
Almost as quickly as I reacted, I remembered. Jesus calls me to a life of love. I recalled the Apostle Paul’s challenge to his friends:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Rather, in humility value others above yourselves (Philippians 2:3 NIV).
Before responding in a way I might later regret, I re-read the text message, and on some deeper soul-level, sensed pain beneath the words. The heart reflecting the “real person” I am because of God’s love for me and the Spirit of Jesus’ love within me emerged. Compassion replaced indignation, and the words I typed in response reflected a kind rather than snarky heart.
So, why does this story matter enough to post during Lent? As I was asking myself this question, I read a blog post from Sacred Ordinary Days (www.sacredordinary days.com) in which the writer, Brooke Cherry Reich, spoke of Almsgiving, one of the pillars of Lent. Brooke said,
These past two years have asked so much of us that we all feel depleted. It's tempting to give in to the lie that we have nothing left to offer. But one thing this Lenten journey teaches is how often the greatest gifts are borne from our need or lack, rather than what feels like our abundance.
These gifts are harder to give—the risk feels greater and the value feels less. But they bring the greatest blessings, both in the ways that they are received by others and in what we receive in turn ….
I often refer to spiritual growth as a journey—sometimes three steps forward and two steps back. In our last session, I bemoaned to my Spiritual Director, Carol, “I am such a slow learner [when it comes to spiritual formation]! She assured me with her words, “We all are!”
Sometimes almsgiving isn’t giving a gift of money, a donation of clothing, words of affirmation to those I love, or donating blood (all goals of mine during this Lenten season), but instead, it is giving a gift of grace. It’s looking beneath MY inconvenience to a deeper need. It’s setting aside MY annoyance and caring rather than criticizing. It’s not reacting out of MY selfish ambition or vain conceit, and rather humbly valuing another above myself.
As we approach the final week of Lent, we will recall Jesus’ Last Supper and prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday; his journey to the cross and crucifixion on Good Friday; and of course, the joy of resurrection on Easter.
My desire for each of us is that our journeys through Lent 2022 will have brought us into greater understanding of what it means to be not only a Christian who believes the story but a reflection of Jesus who IS the story!
Blessings on these final days of Lent,
