Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God….—Romans 12:1
Sometime in late February or early March, at Sunday school, we were given little boxes in the shape of a church with a cardboard steeple and a slit in the top. They were perfect for receiving our dimes and nickels. Starting with Ash Wednesday, we put our coins in them, shaking the boxes each time, hearing the jangle of change, as satisfying as money in our piggy banks. And just in case we wondered what we could do with all that copper and silver, the Sunday school bulletin board was filled with vivid displays of maps and photos: one dollar would feed a family in Africa; a few dollars would buy a household’s rice for a month in Asia.
Once a week in our house we’d have macaroni and cheese or spaghetti without meat so my mom could put some change in our little boxes—symbolic seed money, it was. But we were supposed to find our own ways of going without, too—skipping the weekly trip to the candy store or going without a comic book. Then on Easter Sunday, we gathered those little churches, weighty with coins, and delivered them up as our offering.
Years later I learned more formally about Lenten fasts and the idea of giving something up for Lent; and I met people who gave up all sorts of things for the forty days, from sweets to roast beef. I myself have practiced forgoing a certain favored food, but I have never done it without remembering cardboard churches at Lent and the lesson they held about the meaning of Lent. For if you take a little less for yourself, simplifying your life, you can turn it into a lot more for someone else.
Lord, help me to give up what I can, so I can have more of my life to give.
Excerpted from Walking in Grace.
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