Today is Ash Wednesday, which means that the season of Lent is upon us. For the majority of my life, I was disconnected from this sacred time of reflection, penitence and preparation for Easter, errantly believing it was solely a Catholic tradition. Over the past several years, I have become more intentional about participating in Lent, which has enriched my faith and the celebration of resurrection on Easter.

What I have come to see is that Lent is much more than giving something up. While giving up Facebook, coffee, chocolate and other pleasures in past years has helped me focus on prayer and my dependence on God, their removal from my life did little for others. For me, giving something up along with setting apart regular time for reading and praying have been essential, though incomplete, disciplines during Lent.The truth is that most of the time, I feel the deepest connection with God while giving, loving, caring and serving. This year I am focusing on ways to follow Jesus in giving my life away during Lent, particularly in light of the vision God gives us for abstaining:Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Isaiah 58:6-7I’m not sure which of the following 40 ideas I will choose to do during Lent. It surely won’t be all of them, but I hope that some of these ideas ease us into a position that allows us to have our idols challenged and lives given away to beloved others. 1. Disconnect from technology for an entire weekend, each Sunday of Lent or some other period of time. Spend the time focused on cultivating important relationships in your life.2. Give up your daily latte and donate the money to someone who needs help.3. Think of someone you suspect is lonely or depressed. Commit to building your relationship in tangible ways.4. Get to know a neighbor. Take them dinner, invite them to dinner, shovel their snow, make valentines for their children, walk their dog. Meet needs you see.5. Eat rice and beans one night a week in solidarity with the thousands upon thousands of people around the world who eat it for every meal.6. Give up eating out and donate the money to an organization that feeds the hungry.7. Go through your belongings and donate what you don’t need or use. Consider using freecycle.org.8. Pursue reconciliation with someone you have offended or who has offended you. Choose forgiveness.9. Write one love letter per week to people you want to honor, forgive, encourage, thank or otherwise recognize with loving words.10. Consider joining millions around the world who give up eating meat during Lent. Donate the money you save to a cause important to you.11. Memorize a section of scripture. Consider Psalm 139, Isaiah 58, Matthew 5:1-16, Colossians 1, 1 John 4.12. Don’t buy anything extraneous (excluding food, gas, toiletries and other essentials). Detach yourself from spending and consuming what you don’t need.13. Choose an ongoing conflict around the world. Educate yourself about it and commit to praying for peace.14. Serve your family or roommates with renewed sacrificial love. Think about Jesus when you wash dishes, change diapers, fold laundry, make dinner, shop for groceries. Serve them wholeheartedly for Jesus.15. Commit to praying for peace in Kenya before, during and after the March 4 presidential election.16. Think of the person who makes you most angry and commit to pray for that person throughout Lent.17. Read a book or two about justice and serving. Suggestions include “Small Things with Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor” by Margot Starbuck, “Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live and Die for Bigger Things” by Ken Wytsma, “Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing” by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, and “The Hole in Our Gospel” by Rich Stearns18. Turn the car radio off. Use the time to pray, sing, talk with your family or pray as a family.19. If you are truly brave, try living on $2/day as millions around the world do.20. Spend time outside to enjoy nature and reflect on ways you can better care for it.21. Do you have time to serve in the ministry at church that is always asking for volunteers but never seems to have enough? Take stock of your time and consider saying yes.22. Attend a church service of a different denomination than your own seeking to learn and have your assumptions challenged.23. Pray morning, midday and evening prayers (the “daily office”). You can find prayers at Common Prayer.24. Create a gratitude tree on your wall, naming something you’re thankful for on a leaf each day.25. Give away one thing each day of Lent.26. Invite a child with a disability from your child’s school over to your house for a play date. Be intentional about building a friendship.27. Choose one unhelpful thing you have the habit of saying in a moment of frustration and decide you will no longer say it during Lent. Choose to say nothing or find a better way of expressing yourself.28. Give away books that your children no longer read to organizations that work with low-income children.29. Research programs for immigrants in your area and consider giving your resources or time. Best yet, seek to build a friendship with one immigrant.30. Give up watching television and devote the time to reading, prayer, serving, taking walks or spending time with others.31. Choose to stop photographing life, particularly if you have the habit of incessantly taking photos, as a way of becoming more present.32. Take prayer walks around your neighborhood, praying for your neighbors.33. Choose one thing to better care for the earth: invest in canvas shopping bags, bike to work, designate a no driving day, turn your lights off, bring your own mug, pick up trash in your community.34. Host a viewing of the Live58 film with friends or at church, and brainstorm ways to take action in response.35. Anonymously pay for a stranger’s coffee or lunch.36. Spend a day using a wheelchair or not using your arms in order to get a sense for what it’s like to have a physical disability.37. Surprise someone with a cake to celebrate your friendship.38. Journal about the question, “what injustice in the world breaks the heart of God and deeply stirs me?” Pray about how God wants you to take action.39. Sit in a different place in church each week in order to get to know others. Talk to the people sitting around you.40. This list would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the opportunity to give to eduKenya. Consider giving monthly to enable children in the Mathare slum community to break out of the cycle of poverty.Written by Elizabeth Hopfinger Thompson, eduKenya Communications Director