Fasting From Spending: Learning Contentment

Today, we continue our reflections on the three main practices during the season of Lent: Prayer, Fasting, and Giving.  Our focus this week will be on fasting or letting go of whatever keeps us from experiencing God more fully.  

We live in a culture of consumption.  

Every single day, we are presented with advertisements and information that lead us to believe that, to be more, we need to consume more.  We are studied, tracked, and haunted by algorithms designed to tempt us into buying things we come to believe we can't live without.  

And so, for many of us, we live in an endless cycle of imagined needs, becoming more and more a part of a system designed to sell us on the idea that material posessions will bring us joy.  

The author Ellen Goodman puts it like this: 

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

Spending can become reflex rather than choice. We buy to soothe, celebrate, distract, or impress. The rush we get from acquiring things becomes harder to reach, and we soon find ourselves in debt, regret, or worse.    

Breaking this cycle is harder than it seems for many of us.  Which is why Lent can offer us a way to intentionally break from spending and consuming — one that may lead us to a kind of peace we can't have if we embrace a materialistic life.  Fasting from unnecessary spending during Lent invites contentment.

The Apostle Paul writes, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have” (Philippians 4:11). Contentment is learned, not automatic.

When we pause purchases, we notice desire more clearly. What do we believe money will solve? What longing sits beneath consumption?  It's a longing for acceptance, satisfaction, and instant gratification, none of which is a key to true happiness.  

Fasting from spending creates gratitude. We rediscover sufficiency. We ask whether resources might be directed toward generosity instead.  And we are also given the gift of knowing that our identity isn't defined by our things.  We are more than what we buy.  

This practice is not about austerity but alignment. Money reflects values. Lent invites us to examine them.  Maybe we need to learn what it means to rid ourselves of the possessions that have come to own us.  

Maybe we need to realize that when we are prudent with the money we've been blessed with, we might find a sense of worth that is far more enduring than our stuff.  

Prayer
God of provision, teach us contentment. Help us use resources in ways that reflect your kingdom. Amen.

Reflection Questions

1. What motivates your spending habits?

2. Where might simplicity bring freedom?

3. How could financial restraint nurture generosity?