The Lazarus Project

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus can be found in Luke 16:19-31. This is not the same Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead. This is a parable that Jesus told to the Pharisees to expose their religiosity for the fraud that it was.

This story is about the need to have compassion for the poor, whether it is convenient or not. And this week, our church has been challenged to participate in the Lazarus Project, to better help us identify with the poor.

Let's face it. Americans are RICH when compared to the rest of the world. Even low income Americans have more than the poor in countries like Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world. Our challenge this week is to eat in a way that helps us to identify with the poor. A very common meal in poorer countries is beans and rice.

A few weeks ago, I ask my tweeps (Twitter peeps) for their favorite inexpensive way to fix beans and rice. I received some good responses, and all this week, I'll be posting some of those recipes on my recipe blog.

We are not fans of beans in our house. For one, the unfortunate side effect that they cause. And also because the high sulfur content in a lot of beans can trigger migraines for me. Hence my reason for not being familiar with ways to prepare beans and rice. We won't be fixing many of those recipes this week, but I wanted to share the recipes anyway. I also put together a small collection of recipes to share with our church in case anyone else needed meal ideas during this week.

In addition to the spiritual discipline of denying ourselves the modern American meals for the week, another goal of the Lazarus Project is to collect money to help a nutrition program in Haiti. All of the money that we save during the week by not eating lavish meals will be collected during next Sunday's worship services.

I am very excited to see what this week holds. A lot of Christians observe the practice of giving up something for Lent. The reason for that is to sacrifice something dear to us so that we can better identify with the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us. And even though our Lazarus Project is only for one week during Lent, I am looking forward to seeing what lessons God has for me this week.

Do you observe the practice of giving up something for Lent? If so, what have you sacrificed this year?