1. Swearing
Do you pray to God with that mouth? God will still love you even with a dirty mouth. However, it couldn’t hurt to make a conscious effort to decrease the amount of curse words you use in a day. Make a swear jar to donate your profits to a charity such as the American Cancer Society or UNICEF.
2. Call your grandparents weekly
A Lenten promise doesn’t always have to involve giving something up. Something that you could do is give your grandparents a call each week to see how they’re doing and keep them informed of how your classes are going. As my grandma says, “What’s the point of having all of these grandkids if they never call me?”. So help a grandma out and give her a call, she would be happy to put the knitting down for her favorite grandkid.
3. Candy
This Lenten promise is a two for the price of one deal. If you have a Spring Break vacation coming up where you know that you need to be bikini ready, give up candy. It’s a good way to cut calories and show God just how committed to him you are.
4. Perform a Daily Act of Kindness
Another thing that you can do is something kind every day. Buy someone coffee, hold the door open, anything that is putting someone else before yourself. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor and this is the perfect time to put that into action.
5. Gossiping
Another way that you can love your neighbor is by not gossiping about them. This is also really hard to do so as long as you make a real effort to at least cut down the amount of gossiping you take part in, you are doing a good job. This is my Lenten promise and I’ve made it even more challenging by paying 25 cents to a jar for every time I break it. At the end of the 40 day, I am going to purchase a tee shirt from You Can Sit With Us, which is a campaign sparked to raise awareness of bullying and the harms it can bring to kids both online and in the classroom.