Giving to the needy (Isaiah 58: 6-9)
2nd Week of Lent
We often give up things for Lent but fasting is not just about going without chocolate. It’s about going without something you don’t need in order to focus on the things you do. You might fast from watching TV or going on your phone and spend more time with your family and friends. What can you give up for Lent that will help you understand the really important things in your life?
Mission
What could you give up this week to help you grow in love for God and others?
6 comments
This week Year 2 shared a class liturgy around the theme of Fasting led by Oliver and Harper. Our mission was to ask God to help us forgive others. We discussed how sometimes it’s hard to forgive and say sorry but it is what God wants us to do so we can be good examples of Jesus’ love. The children all had the opportunity to draw a picture during the liturgy of how we can look after others and our neighbours and show love and forgiveness. Some children said by helping a friend, playing with someone who you don’t always get on with and also saying sorry when we make poor choices.
In Year 6B, the liturgy leaders for this week encouraged us to give up some time and spend it with God. In class, the children have shared some of the things they have ‘given up’ – some for the whole of Lent and some just for this week. Many of our conversations came back to technology and how if we spend less time online, we have more time to spend with our friends, families and most importantly: God. We also linked back to one of our previous Circle Times and how during this time of Lent, we can make wiser choices with our money and ‘give up’ buying things that we don’t really need – for example: sweets – and use the money for good.
In our class, we spent time during Circle Time, assemblies and our liturgies to think about what we need (and what’s important) and what we don’t. We thought about how we could try to spend less time doing the things that are not important and spend more time focusing on what is. We came up with examples of things we would choose to do with our time instead e.g. spending quality time with our friends, family and God.
In class, we spent some time during circle time thinking about Fasting and about the things that we give up. Some of us have given up chocolate, our phones, giving to the poor who need clothes and food, limiting screen time and spend more time with family, We discussed how we try to be healthy – this can be doing things or giving things up to try to be healthier or better. It also involves taking time to think about what is important to us.
This week in our class liturgy and Circle Time, we reflected on how Lent gives us an opportunity to go deeper with God and how fasting will enable us to do this.
Lent is more than just “giving something up” and fasting from meat on Fridays, fasting is something more powerful than we think it is.
“Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.”
–Pope Benedict, Lenten message, 2009
Fasting is important because it allows us to remove something from our lives in order to make more space for Christ. Some examples we thought of to allow us to grow in love for God and others during Lent included spending more time with our family, giving to the poor, doing an extra chore each day, performing a random act of kindness and spending more time in prayer.
In our liturgy’s and RE lessons this week, we have been discussing what fasting means to us. We talked about it not just being about giving something up but could be doing something extra instead. We discussed that we would need to use self discipline to show our commitment to our choices. This could mean that we choose to spend more time on something that we find hard rather then choosing the easy option. Through these decisions and sacrifices we become closer to God