The Giving Pantry

from Traci Smith’s book Faithful Families.

Lent is the time that the ancient church set apart for getting ready for the mystery of Easter Sunday. We take time during the season of Lent to be in a Wilderness space…. A space set apart that looks and feels different than the rest of our day to day lives. Kind of like how when we go on a hike, or to the beach, or spend time in the mountains it feels different.

​We engage new disciplines during Lent to turn ourselves back towards our spiritual and physical roots. Here is a simple non-time-consuming practice you can engage in daily with our family using just what's in your pantry!

(Or check out our 5-minute kid-friendly option or our environmentally-friendly habit-changing option here!)
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ALMSGIVING

from Traci Smith’s book Faithful Families

​Giving to the poor is a key feature of most of the world’s religions. In Christianity, giving is especially important during Lent. Almsgiving is one of the three traditional Lenten “pillars”, along with prayer and fasting. This practice is modified for families to be an offering of food, rather than money. Food is a tangible thing for young minds to grasp and it also offers an opportunity to talk about hunger in your community.
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Materials:

• Large cardboard box
• Materials for decorating the box: paper, markers, tape, glue, scissors etc.

 
How to:

1. Do some advance filling of your pantry with items that are helpful to the organization Storyline will be donating to this Lent: Backpack Buddies at Oak Grove Elementary. Here’s a list from the North Clackamas SD website of helpful items:

• granola bars
• peanut butter
• fruit cups
• pull tab/pop top cans of noodles
• cans of protein (meat, chili)
• peanut butter or cheese crackers
• small boxes of raisins
• foil lid apple sauce cups
• trail mix
• nuts in pouches
• cans of hearty soup

​Everything in Backpack Buddies gets packed into sacks and is supposed to fit in a child’s backpack and be a weekend’s worth of food for that child. While it might feel more economical or efficient to buy bigger things, the goal is helping relieve a child’s hunger over the weekend when their free/reduced meals at school are not available.

1. Sometime during the first week of Lent, sit down with your family to start this activity. Explain that one of the pillars of Lenten faith practice is to give alms. Alms are a monetary sacrifice to help people in need. Tell your family that you alms will be to give on food item per day from your pantry.
2. Decorate the box and label it “The Giving Box”. As you are decorating, talk about the practice and how it will work: each day one family member will select something from the pantry to put in the box and, at the end of the 40 days, the box of food will be delivered to Oak Grove Elementary for Backpack buddies.
3. For each of the days of Lent, take turns taking things out of the pantry and putting them into the box. Choose a time of day to do this that fits into your family routine. Talk about hunger during this time. How do you feel when you are hungry? If you were hungry every day, what would you pray for?

 
 
Something to think about: Is it easier to just buy all the stuff and gather it and give it all at once? Yes. Our focus in this practice is just that: the practice. The daily act of taking something out of the pantry and putting it in to the box will help create awareness and mindfulness about our neighbors and our call to be neighbors.

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