Guiding Prayer For Our Season of Fasting:
Our Father who art in
heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and
forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against
us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil. For Thine is the kingdom,the power, and the glory, forever and
ever. Amen.
Myself in Truth
Holy God, in fasting
may I find my grounding in you. In
giving up minor earthly comforts, may I somehow find connection to you and the
life that you lived, one without a home. Amen
Nurtured and Nurturing
Holy God may the time
given up from media and getting to know family and friends more draw us together
and not apart. Amen
The Gathered
Creator God, bring us
away from the longing for earthly things and into a longing for you and a sense
of connectedness with one another as your church. Amen
Challenge
Read all of Luke
chapter 9 tonight, or again if your read it last night. What jumps out at you? What are you convicted of? Write it down and pray that God might guide
you in how to act on your conviction.
Total buy in. That’s all I was asking
for from my family. Total buy in. What I
got was chaos. It’s like they had both
eaten from the same bowl of evil and had emerged wanting to foil my every attempt
at serenity and family time. “Fasting
Flakes: a mouthful of dissent in every bite”.
That’s what I’m gonna say they had in their evil bowl. I am sure how I
felt at that moment was how the Israelites must have felt amongst the
Philistines.
Please bare with me all you who do not
have kids living in your home. I hope
you take delight in my harrowing story as you enjoy your bubble bath and quiet time of
fasting.
Okay, let me rewind and start at the
beginning. First of all, I had gotten
all of the ingredients together for homemade pizza and semi-homemade brownies
with visions of a Martha Stewart meets Beth Moore moment with my family. That did not happen. I walk in the door with an arm full of
groceries to meet my husband who says, “I know we’re supposed to be having
family time with the fast, but I really need to cut the grass. Pastor Patrick
did say get outdoors with your family so why don’t I take Jozie and she can
swing while I cut.” I naively agree to this arrangement and start gathering the
ingredients for a mother/daughter cooking experience.
I rolled out and prepped the bread, cut
all of the veggies then started with the brownie mix so that the messiest part
of the cooking would be done before Jozie joined in on the fun. About the time that I added the oil and water
to the mix, I saw Jozie standing by the Beauty Berry bush and Gavin pushing
that mower right along. Now the night before, Jozie and I had had a
conversation about how the beauty berries were not raspberries and might make
her sick if she ate them (I have since found out that they are edible in small
amounts). But I was not sure she was totally convinced and that I just didn’t
want her to eat the raspberries. Just as I was about to have a poisonous
berries freak out moment and sat the brownie mix down to run and stop her, she
came bounding through the door, no trace of purple berries on her mouth or
tongue and we washed hands and set forth making dinner.
After eating a handful of the cheese
and putting on about eight pepperonis, Jozie says she has to “go get something”
and runs out of the room, so I finish the pizzas and stir the brownie mix when
she reappears in pajamas and wants to “help with the brownies”. Her idea of helping was to stick her spoon in
and taste the mix and tell me that she could “stir”. I told her no and she ran off and I went to
put the pizza in the oven and look in the pantry for a side dish to go with the
pizza. When I returned to the kitchen
counter, the brownie mix was gone. Jozie had taken the bowl to her little table
in the living room and had been eating the mix as fast as she could for probably
the last five minutes. I took the mix
from her, (shocked at how much mix she could put down with a kiddie spoon); put
the mix in a pan and the pan in the oven.
Fast forward fifteen minutes and pizza
is done but the brownie mix is still bubbling.
Something is wrong. I take them all
out and go to get my husband for our Martha family meal, and he informs me that
he has to finish the lawn and can only stop for a water break. He has a slice
of pizza on the fly while Jozie has one of her own while watching Jess the Cat
and I am on the couch giving them both grumpy disappointed looks.
Fast forward ten more minutes and my daughter
is running around like a deranged monkey child because of all the brownie mix
she had eaten and I am chipping the actual brownies out of the pan because they
are an eggless chocolate toffee (remember the berry moment in the middle of
brownie making). Envision downward
spiral from there.
But amidst all of the chaos, while “Jes
the Cat” was on because I can’t watch my TV shows and relax, I pulled out my
Bible and begin to read Luke chapter 9.
Wow. In that one little chapter
is the commissioning of the twelve disciples, feeding the 5,000, “Take up your
cross and follow me”, the transfiguration of Jesus with Moses and Elijah, casting
out of Demons and so much more.
But
one little story at the end of the chapter just really grabbed me and that was
about following Jesus. In verse 57 and 58 it says:
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you
wherever you go.” 58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and
birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Hmm, here I am angry and upset that I
don’t get my TV time and I that I have a feral child, and I read in the Word that Jesus had no home to call his
own.
But there is something greater than the
guilt factor going on in this passage. There is a call to find our home in
Christ. There is permanence in God that
we cannot find in the world and that nothing and no one can take away from
us. Not recession, not war, or sickness
or employers or politics, or those who would wish us ill. While there is not a promise of earthly
comfort there is the promise of the constant and loving presence of the God we
love and serve. Jesus wasn’t always welcomed and neither will we be, but we
will always have our Heavenly Father.
Jesus sneaks one more thing in there
that I think fits so perfectly with this season of fasting that we are in. He
reminds us that in order to follow him, we have to be willing to give up
something to get something greater. We
have to be willing to be uncomfortable to carry the comfort of Christ to the
lost and hurting… who may just be our family or friends.
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