Happy Ash Wednesday!
I can't believe we are already beginning the season of Lent again. Matt and I have been thinking hard about what our Lenten discipline will be this year. After going through a number of different options, we settled on one that will challenge us to recognize our own privilege and encourage us to increase our giving. So here is the plan:
For the next 40 days, we will live on the amount of food stamps that an average family of 2 qualifies for in the US (note: we cannot ourselves qualify for food stamps b/c we have money in savings...that makes you ineligible). This comes out to be somewhere around $42 every two weeks or $21 per week.
The tricky thing about food stamps (and where we will not follow exactly) is that they cannot be used on non-food items...things like personal care products, Diet Coke, Coffee, dog food, etc. The point is not to give up those things so we will actually just be practicing the $21 a week on food purchases. At the end of 40 days we will give the money that we would have normally spent on groceries to a local charity that works to feed low-income and homeless people in our area.
May we use these 40 days to recognize the ways in which we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves and have hoarded a lot of things for our own good.
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