Written by Guest Contributor, Katie Wiff | February 15, 2024
As a Children’s Ministry Director, I’m always on a quest to find ways to teach Biblical practices or lessons through means that can be fun and easily grasped by the minds of young children. For example, how do you educate a child about a season with so much depth and significance such as Lent, which we have just entered into with yesterday’s observance of Ash Wednesday?
One way I tried to teach about this in a recent Sunday school lesson was with the song “The Hokey Pokey.” Remember that one?
“You put your right hand in, you take your right hand out, you shake it all about.”
In the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter, God takes us and turns us around. There’s a rhythm and steps to Lent, just like there is in the song. Through prayer, repentance, and fasting, we grow closer to God as He turns our souls around to be oriented more toward him. Fasting is a common practice during Lent, so we spent a lot of time in Sunday school talking about this. The denial of self is an interesting concept to many of the children, and it can be a tough one for us adults, too.
But whether it’s to kids in Sunday school, or us adults, we can’t talk about what fasting is without also talking about what it isn’t. Fasting doesn’t always have to be food related. We don’t fast out of piety or obligation. It isn’t a have-to thing, nor is it something that wins us any points with God. Jesus already paid our sin debt in full. All of our responses to a deepening of our faith overflow from what God has done for us on the cross. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19) and sent His Son to suffer in our place. In the 40 days leading up to Easter, we can take time to prepare and repent. Fasting is a way to do this.
To that end, I issued the children at my church a challenge that I am now posing to you also. This Lenten challenge is called Give Up and Give To. The Give Up piece is to make space in our hearts for God to turn us around. This may be in the form of a fast. However, the Give To piece is to take the next step to live out our calling to love our neighbor by living out a spirit of generosity. It will look different for everyone but here are just a few ideas to get you thinking:
It might mean Give Up and fast from a TV show you like to watch. In its place, I challenge you to Give To that time by spending it with God in His Word or prayer instead. Or maybe you can Give Up and fast from your weekly Starbucks coffee and instead use that purchase to Give To and buy coffee or a gift card for your child’s teacher, school nurse or principal instead. Another idea would be to Give Up social media. I challenge you to use that time you typically spend scrolling social media and Give To your relationships in more intentional ways, opting to call or text the friend that you usually follow silently on Facebook. Lastly, maybe you’ll choose to Give Up your favorite food for the 40 days of Lent. In that case, I challenge you to take it a step further and Give To and volunteer or donate money to a local homeless shelter where so many people are living with food insecurity.
Whatever we choose to give up and give to, my Lenten prayer is for God to turn us around. That He would turn us away from our sin and toward His will our lives; that He would turn us away from our selfishness and towards selflessly loving and serving others in a spirit of generosity.
Bio:
Katie Wiff is a wife and mother of three busy children ages 12, 9, and 6. She is the Children’s Ministry Director at Lord of Life Church in Elburn, Illinois. She loves walking her dog and doing puzzles of all kinds from escape rooms to jigsaw puzzles to crosswords.
