What are you giving up for Lent? Chocolate, alcohol, meat?
Every year I get a reminder from Yeldall Manor drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Hare Hatch to give something up and be sponsored to do so.
This is to draw alongside those men giving up drugs and alcohol (not just for 40 days but for life) and raising money to help other men find that help.
Giving up the things we enjoy, or those things that have trapped us in addiction can be very hard, even for 40 days, but as we sacrifice, we have to think of the greater sacrifice that was made 2,000 years ago.
The Bible tells us that because we want to decide what is right and wrong, what is good and what is evil, not be dictated to by God, we are separated from God and are his enemies.
No matter how hard we try, we hold on to those things that separate us from God.
We may be good or as near perfect by this world’s standards as we compare ourselves with other people, but when we compare ourselves to God we do not meet his standards.
But God in his mercy has made the greatest sacrifice to allow us to be reconciled to him.
St Paul tells us (Philippians chapter 2) that Jesus, “Who being in very nature God … made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant… he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death”.
Because God loves us, Jesus gave up everything to live as a man, face humiliation, brutality and finally death taking our sins upon himself so that we might be forgiven by turning to him and accepting him as Lord.
This Lent, consider him who gave all.
Ian Stewart is a member of Christ Church, Wokingham, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
