New Resource Alert: 2020 Lenten Calendar

We’re please to share the third year of the UTO Lenten Devotional Calendar!

This calendar will help introduce you to the recipients of the 2019 UTO Grants and 2019 Young Adult and Seminarian Grants. This year, some of the items for you to count have expanded out to include your town. We hope that this will be a fun internet search or scavenger hunt to help you get to know your community better.

Just like last year, we invite you to prayerfully consider how much you will donate for each item that you count in your house or in your community. It is like making a pledge for each mile walked in a fundraiser. Consider giving a dime or dollar for each item, and write this amount at the top of the calendar. Beginning on the day after Ash Wednesday, you are invited to read daily about one 2019 UTO Grant site and maybe explore its webpage to learn more. Then, you are asked to look around your house or community to count the specified items, which are related to the request being met by that day’s grant. After you’ve counted, you can write the number on the calendar so you can make one thank offering at the end of Lent, or simply place the number of coins (or dollars) you committed to into your Blue Box.

On Ash Wednesday and on Sundays, we simply invite you to consider an area of your life and reflect on how it blesses you. We hope you see this as a weekly reminder of the blessing of hope found when our community gathers together to celebrate the Eucharist to remember the promises of our faith. I hope you enjoy this Lenten Devotional opportunity. Please let me know that you’ve used it, and feel free to share ideas you might have to help deepen our spiritual discipline of gratitude during Lent.

Wishing you all the best for a Holy and Sacred Lent,
The Rev. Canon Michelle I Walker
Associate Staff Officer, the United Thank Offering of
The Episcopal Church