Easter gardening
April 17, 2025
Embracing our crosses with faith, courage, and hope in the Resurrection
April 17, 2025
By Daniel Francis
As we bring this Lenten season to a close, I thought it apt to encourage us all to think about the last 40 days. What did you sacrifice and how did it bring you closer to God? Did you experience anything that had a hidden message from God? What will you keep with you beyond Lent?
As I have mentioned in some of my recent articles, I took on two journeys during this Lenten period. God called me to donate $10 for each sin and to take on a path of forgiveness. These two journeys have bestowed tremendous lasting lessons that I want to share with you all in hopes that they help or encourage you.
From the beginning, I knew donating money for each sin would be a difficult task, not only because I was almost surely guaranteed to be donating a decent amount of money but also because I knew just actively thinking about sin all day, every day, would put a strain on mind, body, and soul.
In the early days, I became very aware of how often I sinned. So much so that I began making a note of what my sins were. The notes helped me see what sins were happening most often, and I created a process to help stop the main offenders from happening as often. The constant resilience to proactively stay in line was honestly very tiring.
The tiring nature of this journey made me acutely aware of how much in my life needed to change. From the music I listen to, with cursing and sexual innuendoes, to the events I attended that created an environment that made me more likely to sin.
It became clear to anyone that doing something like this to deepen your faith and decrease the likelihood to sin requires you to separate yourself from the unholy elements. Easier said than done.
We like our music, we like our parties, we even like our friends who sometimes get us into trouble.
However, by not truly trying to follow the will of God, we are making excuses that, at the core of it, comes down to our choice. Our choice to do wrong even if it goes against God. That’s what I was doing every time I sinned. I was choosing to walk the wrong path, albeit a comfortable one, that was leading me in the wrong direction.
Now, yes, we are only human and yes, we are sinners, but there is definitely a lot we can do proactively to help ourselves here. All this comes down to choice.
On the path of forgiveness, I learned that on top of creating peace, it also comes down to love. God said to love your enemies, pray for them, and mean it. A challenging task when someone has hurt you.
Forcing myself to speak to someone who I had so much animosity towards and to forgive them proved one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. Then getting to the realisation that I must learn to love them too took me over the edge initially. What brought me back was prayer. I began praying for those whom I had forgiven, just like I pray for my friends and family. I could feel warmth coming out of this act over time.
I forgave them, I worked to release the negative energy that I had bottled up, and I learned to love them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t interact with most of whom I forgave, but just working on genuinely wishing them well brought this journey to a new height.
Throughout this Lenten journey, I recognised the power sin has over us and how bottling up our negative emotions can have a drastic negative effect on us physically, mentally, and spiritually.
However, it is so beautiful that God lays out everything we need to do right there in His words. I think by putting me on this path, He was reminding me to follow His word. Don’t just hear it and read it but truly follow it.
Though Lent is over, I plan to take what I learned and this new positive behaviour with me. I hope from my experience you take something from it, and you look back at your Lenten experience and see what positive changes you can take with you into the rest of this year and your life.
Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.
LinkedIn: Daniel Francis
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Website: www.ompublishing.org
