Lent is more than halfway done. Brent Retzlaff shares how his radical decision has impacted him so far.

Retzlaff gave up spending money for Lent, excluding necessary monthly bills. He also is not allowing himself to buy even basic purchases such as groceries and fuel. Working at Siloam Mission has allowed him to receive necessary meals during the day, but it has been a struggle. He does allow himself to accept help from others, but will not ask for help.

"I realised that it was kind of a pretty radical thing to do but I feel really strongly that Jesus was a radical person and that he did some radical stuff. Not specifically what I'm doing but some pretty radical things that people might be like 'oh that's kind of out there.' The people in my life who I think are behaving the most like Jesus are the people who I oftentimes think 'that's a little bit wild what they're doing.'"

Since he has had to rely so much on his community to support him through this he says, "it's opened my eyes to what the value of community is and how important community is in terms of being able to achieve the vision that Christ has for us in our lives."

He thinks that this experience will change how he thinks even after the season of Lent is over. "What I've learned is I haven't been able to be particularly generous in this time due to not being able to spend money but I've been trying to spend a lot more time with people just because if I can invite people over to my house or something that's something I can do to still hang out with people rather than going out to eat. I've realised that people around me are so generous that I didn't even necessarily realise it in the past. Going forward I'd like to try to have that orientation more in my life of generosity toward others and just freely giving."

Retzlaff wants to encourage others from what he has learned. "The big thing for me is that Jesus was a radical person and as Christians, we need to constantly think about radical ways that we can be Christians... Christians are called to be in the world but not of it. As much as we can do to try to force our brains into that we're not trying to be a part of the regular society, you know, buying lots of items... Buying a Playstation or something like that might not be the best use of your money when there are other places that God might want us to put our money more towards and think first about the wider community before we think about ourselves."

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