B (4:15)

Well, I personally don't know too much about Lent. I not much about Ashwin today either. I remember in my youth group, like a few years ago, we delve a little bit into it, but my church personally did not do it. I had a lot of friends at school that would do it, but basically it was where they would give up something for 30 days or 30 or 40.

A (4:39)

Close 40. 40 days, 40 plus. Okay.

B (4:42)

Because of Jesus's time. It was like I had a lot of friends said that they gave up soda or caffeine or coffee or Terrible idea. It was. Well, like, I respected them for it. Did I ever do it? No. And I thought it was more of a Catholic practice, if anything, because I didn't know many, but I don't know if any other denomination does it or anything, but I know that my mom actually participated in Lent, or should I say, like, giving up. Her. She. She was addicted to sweet tea, so she said that she was going to give up sweet tea for 40 days.

A (5:17)

So. Okay, so pretty close to. Pretty close to the concept. Okay, so this is again, we're getting into some foreign church words and terms. And so we're kind of defining that. So Ash Wednesday, this is the start of the Lent season. So Lent is this journey in the Christian faith that we would kind of. They would say, lack of a better term. We kind of walk along with Christ as he goes to the crucifixion.

B (5:49)

Right.

A (5:49)

Okay. And the Resurrection. So all of Lent goes to lead up to Easter. Okay. And so Easter is the end of this Lent season. So all of this is this journey to go along this path, to go to the crucifixion of Christ and then the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. So then in it. So then we get to the weirdness and we're going to start defining what Lent is in Ash Wednesday. And why is it even relevant to feed my sheep and such like that. Because this is kind of confusing. But so then to make it even more confusing slightly, hey, I'm not even going to tell this, not even going to try. But Easter is different every day. I mean, every year it comes on a different day. Easter is based upon some full moon. And it must be certain amount of these number of days passed past a certain full moon that determines when the Easter Sunday is. Then they would go backwards on the calendar from Easter. And then technically lent is 40 days prior to Easter, not counting the Sundays. Each Sunday that occurs during Lent does not count on the calendar coming up to it technically. Okay, so then way confusing. So then that's how we would come when. How do you determine when Ash Wednesday is? So then we would go, this is when Fat Tuesday is, which is this last little celebration, which is not tradition. And another one like this is just normal for me. Like next Tuesday at your house, you better have a bunch of king cakes. Well, nobody around here knows what a king cake is, but that's what you ate. And then if you got the piece of cake that had the baby in it, then you would have to buy the next king cake. Nobody knows these things. I'm like, that's just normal. Okay, but it's not normal. So Ash Wednesday, we're starting this Lent journey. So we're going to get caught up on the church calendar. Deal. And to see how it applies, Ash Wednesday is the start of this journey. So March 5th, Ash Wednesday is this generally. Generally not all, because I grew up, and I grew up in a Methodist faith and we did celebrate Ash Wednesday. So not all. It's not just Catholics, but Catholics tend to celebrate Lent. It is a bigger part of their church calendar than a lot of the Protestant type religions. But the Methodists, we did have Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is a service that starts Lent, where you go and it's this really strange moment where you come and recognize our own mortality. So Ash Wednesday is technically the ashes that we would use in the church came from the palm leaves that were burned following Palm Sunday the year previous. So it's the ashes from the previous Palm Sunday that they use, and they make this thing, and they put ashes on your forehead, which is. I've seen that it's a bit odd. They put. The priest or the pastor would put ashes on your forehead and it serv. A reminder. And it says, from dust you were made, and from dust you shall return. It's a reflection of our own mortality that we will die. That you came from dirt and you're going to go back into dirt. So all of that, that's how this whole thing starts. And so you're going, wow, that's really cool. Feed My Sheep is starting a deal where they're going to celebrate that we're going to die. Not at all. Okay, so you did touch upon it. Lent his. Historically been a time that people would give something up. Like, I'm not going to eat chocolate for the next 40 days. And somehow that sacrifice was going to make you understand what a great sacrifice Jesus made for me. Not sure that's the most theologically sound dealer. And I'm not saying I have something better at all, but it would be that so that you would. You would give something up. Then they came later. Or you could add something like, you could add a spiritual discipline to your. I'm going to read the Bible every day for this amount of time for the next 46, what? 40 days, not counting Sunday. So 46, 47 days. I'm going to now every day during Lent, I'm going to read the Bible 30 minutes during the day every day for the next 40 days. Take up something or I'm going to do this. Okay. So that leads us to what I think could be very interesting, whether you are a believer in the Christian faith or not. I thought that it would be really, really, really possibly cool if. What if we got the whole community. So, like, right now at Feed My Sheep, we have like almost 9,000 people that are Facebook follower thingamajiggy thing, whatever that is called. They do. They see our Facebook stuff. We got podcasts, we got social media. We have all this stuff. We probably touch, you know, 10, 15,000 people. Okay. Every week, every day through these platforms that I don't completely understand. And I thought wouldn't be kind of cool if we all went down this Lent path, connected together, and we did the same things concurrently on the same days at the same time. And we looked at what kind of impact this could have on a community. So that is kind of the experiment idea. So what we are going to do at Feed My Sheep is we're going to use the term Lent. Doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Protestant, Neither. We're going to come up with 40 different days. We didn't come up with the days, but like the March 5th. Huh? I didn't invent March 5th. There's March 6th, there's March 7th. It goes all the way to April 20th. That's Easter Sunday. Every day during that time, what we are going to do on our different social media stuff, on Facebook, on Instagram, all these different things, which I understand about as good as you understood what Fat Tuesday is. I don't understand what these things mean, how they work, none of that stuff. But I thought it would be so cool. We are going to each day come up with either something new that somebody could add to their normal schedule for the day, okay? Something they could maybe give up for the day, something they could do extra for the day, but something they could do for other people. So we've got a group of people that every day they're going to put a different assignment that everybody in the community could be doing concurrently. Okay. Like maybe one of them might be. Well, one of them will be over the course of Lent, I don't know what day it will be, but one of them will be simply go somewhere and watch the sun set in silence and just reflect upon that. Be out in nature, that will be one. And where you have all these people possibly going out and seeing what a beautiful thing the sunset is and just to enjoy quiet together. One of them may be doing benevolent good for other people without them even knowing. So, like this one intrigues me to know in done it before at a smaller scale, go like you work at a restaurant, okay. Go through the drive thru and pay for the meal for the next person behind you and don't let them know and just do an act of kindness for somebody else. Go to a grocery store, go to a pharmacy, do something that may be one that we would think like we would start the day and to believe that 10,000 other people are possibly in this little town or around the world with social media tools doing this same thing in a very different way all over the place. A community, caring for the community. And it's, it's a beautiful thing, okay? And then it grows in that maybe it is in your life. One of these, one of the days will be this. I know, okay, that maybe there's a relationship that needs restoring, okay? Or a hurt that maybe you need to ask or you need to give or receive forgiveness from because you can't ask somebody to forgive you, but you could put forgiveness to somebody else. Maybe one of the days would be simply, hey, today. Find a relationship that needs restoration and let that person know, hey, that maybe it is. You haven't talked to a loved one in a long time. Life is busy and we go, man, hey, you haven't talked to your son, your daughter, your mom, your dad, your uncle, whatever, in a long time. Reach out to them in whatever form that you would feel comfortable doing and just let them know that they were thought about and cared about today. So the idea of this is, we can't say that I would understand truly the sacrifice that Jesus made and what he felt when. When it says, what is it? Luke 9:51, I think. And Jesus resolutely turned his eyes upon Jerusalem like he turned his eyes on the sacrifice that was coming. I'm not claiming that by doing this we could understand what that felt like. But I am saying, can you imagine, like, I like this, we could start something that could be a movement for a little time of doing for ourselves and doing for others in a community. And then if you had this and you do the math, if 10,000 people, if one. Even if this. If one person, like, I'm banking, like, you're on the hook, I'm on the hook. Okay, worst case scenario, Worst case scenario, okay, we help one person. Okay, then do it. Then it's worth doing. But can you imagine if 10 people really did this each day, what an incredible thing could be occurring in temple? And what about if a hundred people did? That's not even 1% of the people that follow what we do on social media. You'd go, if 1% just truly invested in the community. Okay, that's huge. 10%. That's a thousand people. 10% thousand people in our community that could truly do profound, amazing things. Okay, lord forbid if 10,000 people proactively went on this journey all together and saying, you know what? We want to walk down this path because we want things to be better, and we're willing to make a sacrifice to say that it is so. And the reason that it must be, you must give something up. Uncertainty. And we're not going to go, you got to give up caffeine for all of Lent, because that's a terrible idea. I'm just kidding, but I couldn't do without diet Dr. Pepper. But a day that we would sacrifice. Okay, that's good. A day that we would nurture our own spirit. A day that we would do for others. A day that we would try to grow ourselves. Behaviors can change. What do they say? 21 days of doing something it becomes a habit. Hey, what if we've created in a community the habit of taking care of ourselves, caring for others and doing for others is the habit that we are doing and we're going in a journey together. So that is the experiment that we are going to do. The term we're going to use is over Lent. Okay? If you are not familiar with that, that doesn't make it a deal breaker. That is not a deal breaker. That's neither here nor there. It is the journey that we will go on together. It just happens to be in the calendar that we are familiar with. The term we would use is Lent. Okay? If you don't want to use that term, it is March 5th through April 20th, okay? That is whatever you want to call it on the calendar. That's the journey we want to begin together. So each day you would go to the different social media platforms, you would see the assignment for the day. Okay? We understand the world is busy, okay. And we're not going to say, by the way, don't go to work today. People can't do that. It would fit within the confines of your daily life that you could do it with a little bit of effort. And then what's cool is let's use the same tools that we have. And each day it would be such a marvelous deal is people could share on Facebook or different social media platforms the experiences they had doing the task the day before. You're not going to believe this. I paid for the people's food behind me at such and such restaurant. And they'll see the smile on their face. They were so shocked. They couldn't believe what just occurred. It really was such a neat feeling or guess what's going to occur. Also, somebody's going to get food purchased for them and they're not going to understand why. And they could be part of this program. They're going to go, oh, my gosh. You're not going to believe somebody did this for me or somebody. One of them will be buy flowers for somebody who's in assisted living that you don't know and go deliver those to them and just let them know that they are cared about. Stranger and report. It was so amazing. I gave flowers to this person and they did this. I watched the sunrise. Sunset, sunrise. Whatever the case, I watched the sunset and I didn't realize how many colors the sunset had in it. It's magnificent. And I've never heard silence that loud before my life. I'm so glad I did that. I've never read this Book. I've never read this chapter. I've never heard this story. I read it for the first time, and my heart was deeply, deeply stirred. We do this together. Okay. It is an amazing thing that could occur. And the worst thing that could happen out of this, in my mind, the worst thing that could happen is people are helped, individuals grow. Okay. Heath and wellness is expanded, lack of a better term. Why would you not try this? So it is open to anybody to join along. Understandable.

B (21:48)

Oh, 100% doable. I will say. One time, whenever I worked at a Bahama Bucks, it went on for, like, 16 cars. 16 cars.

A (21:57)

Okay. That's. Somebody paid and that's right.

B (21:59)

Yeah. Somebody paid for the person behind them. And it went on for a long time. And it's so influenceable.

A (22:07)

You did work at Bahama Bucks, didn't you? I did, yeah. I used. Oh, my. Okay.

B (22:11)

We were taking bets on how, like, far this would go, and it had exceeded our expectation, like, every time. And it was really interesting seeing, like, they're like, you know what? How much is it? How much is the person behind me? Like, 25. Let me. Let me go ahead and get it. It was honestly just astounding. Like, we were all smiling in the back. And not only does it, like, really influence the people that you helped, it influences the people that also see it. They brought us so much joy to see how it just was a domino effect. We have a lot of people that. I work at the restaurant now, like, I make it a goal to at least make one person laugh at a table. Like, I will make at least one table laugh at some joke or something I said or make them smile or, you know, it's just. It's the little things that really count, and they're. It's all doable. Like, it is so doable.

A (23:05)

And like this. I don't know the world why we have made these things that are big things to become where we use the little things. Bringing joy and happiness to others is not a little thing. It's a big thing. It's what we were made for. We do it well when we do it. And like this, I love the thought because we don't even grasp the impact like this. The acts are not to bring attention to ourselves. They're not to bring attention to feed my sheep. They're not to bring attention to anything. It's not about that. It's not about that. It is just to. To share a little bit of the joy along this journey of life. That can be very difficult. Life is not Easy, you know, and so like that. And then for me, we won't even go down this rabbit trail. I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it. How this world will profoundly change for the better is like this. The community coming together and saying, care. We're going to make a difference. Whether it seems insignificant or not, we are going to join together because that's what communities do. And so I love this. It's the act of each day. What a great discipline. I better go look and see what the assignment for today is and try to do it. Okay. And then be neat to go look, look at what in the world happened. And then could you imagine, like for me, that you can't even scroll through the sheer number of good that occurred the day before that people reported on. Because, you know, if I went right now on this, it's going to take me. Oh, let me see. Nope, ain't going to happen because there ain't none out there of people. But not that there's not good going on, but can you imagine if you looked and going, oh, my gosh, look at this. That's got to be this number of things that are occurring that really, really are bringing joy to a little community. Be kind of exciting to wake up and to go, okay, what in the world am I supposed to do today? Go walk down at the lake and listen to the waves? There's all the different flows of this thing that come together and we're doing it all together, all together. So that is coming to everybody out there in social media world. Hopefully you got a little understanding of why we are starting it. And then, and the truth of it is, okay, it is a biblical deal, Lent. Okay, I can't escape that. Not trying to escape it. Okay, the, the point that we are starting is a simple recognition. We must start at this place. We must start. The thing that we all share in common on the first day of this journey is that we all came from the same place and we're all going to go back to the same place we were all born and we will all die. Our mortality is the thing that we share together. How we live our life is the thing that makes us independent. So like this, we come together because we recognize that our life is finite, but the works that we could do, they could live on long after us, you know, and so, like the metaphor on this, and I'm not going to claim I understand the sacrifice of Christ, but we are going to begin a journey to recognize the sacrifice somebody made in a life, a human being. Made for me. Not even going to come close to even touching the scope of that. Things can outlive us. So wouldn't it be neat if we are on the front side and we are of a movement that it doesn't just stop in temple. It's all over. And you're looking at something that started lymph Temple, Texas, and you're like, what in the world? Somebody in New York did this. Somebody in Europe did something here. Somebody in Temple did this. Somebody in Rogers did this. Lives were touched. So that's the explanation. That is what we're going to try to do. It's what we're going to do. So I hope we will get on board and get part of that will be more information. You're going to start seeing slides. They're going to be these foreign terms of Lent and these things. But it is March 5th will be the first task. We begin the journey together. So I do encourage you to go look at social media, to go look at the different stuff, see what it is. Let's let this journey begin and we will get the details of it. Yeah. Understandable.

B (28:03)

Yeah. Pretty simple. Simple.

A (28:07)

Pretty simple. Pretty simple. And it could be so, so amazingly beautiful. So amazingly beautiful. So that is that. And the reason we will do this and the reason that we would even attempt something like this is not to make feed my sheep look good, whatever that means. I don't even know what that means. We do this because we truly believe that people matter. We do. And we would also say in this context every single time. We'll say it and we'll say it and we'll say it. That you are. If you're listening to this, if you are agreeing with this, if you're disagreeing with this, doesn't matter. But you are a person and you matter. Everyone. And we do believe that if a community of individual people came together, okay. What all they could do would be profound. Huge. So that is that. That is the experiment. I hope we are on the front side of something crazy good. So that's it. Hope you all have a great day and thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Collage Podcast, a production of Redcord Media. For more information on this and other podcasts, please visit redcordmedia.org.