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In the eye of the storm <3

As you know if you visit here often, this blog is 96.2% off the cuff every morning. 

Oh sure, there are rare occasions when I actually plan and write ahead…but those blissful days are few and far between.

So if you missed yesterday’s post, you may want to hop back and read that or this one stands not a prayer of making sense. 

And speaking of prayer…I pray if you DID read yesterday’s, you can glean some thinking from this one to get your own mind and heart seeking God.

I am not coming to you with answers, just thoughts on fasting in America in the year 2018 where even Taco Bell can make a convincing argument that you need to hurry on down there and grab one of those weird combos of whatever they are peddling today. 

After I wrote my thoughts and posted on Wednesday, my mind was a rush of things and since I have to be out the door by 6:15 sharp and I still have plants to water outside…I am not prettying them up. 

Here they are in no particular order or grammatical finery…and I will check back later when I have time and attempt to correct typos so apologies up front to all the English teachers.

<3 It’s not just peaches. Fasting is about abstaining from food and possibly drink. It’s about not giving the body sustenance. and how foreign in many ways that concept is to an overindulgent culture like ours. Oh, we are used to the concept of fasting, but it is to lose weight or maintain weight. 

There are many who fast regularly to the point of famishing but it is to feed a self image of being thin. 

So the “fast” isn’t the thing.

Think of the people of this time. 

They were not inundated with choices of foods.

They didn’t seven day meal plan or prep lunches for the week.

They lived day by day on a pretty standard diet based on what was available around them.

I have visited such places in this world and I can tell you…the fast would not be about denying oneself a tasty morsel of sweet treats. 

The fast is about saying…this situation that we are facing is so much bigger than we can humanly handle, we need a big God. 

We need God to show up even more than we need the life-giving sustenance of our next meal. 

Esther and Mordecai and all the Jews fasted because the King had signed papers authorizing the annihilation of their entire people group in that country.

David fasted for the life of the child born out of the sin of his affair with Bathsheba. 

Jehoshophat called the nation to fast when they were surrounded on all sides by several great armies. 

Daniel fasted to hear from God to understand the visions he was having. 

On and on we have examples in history of people who fasted out of a response to some great need. 

We also have Scripture that sets us to believe that we probably need God more than just those moments of intense crisis. 

Jesus mentioned….to us…. “and when you fast….” setting the expectation that we would fast as part of our regular worship and spiritual journey. 

God also made clear that the heart of the fast matters when he said in Isaiah 58:6 that the fast isn’t just a rote event that we participate in, but rather there should be a heart bent toward the things God cherishes as we deny ourselves sustenance and seek only His Face. 

I had about twenty minutes near the end of the afternoon to jot down these thoughts before our Spanish class last night. 

After class, we came home and yes…ate some dinner….(no peaches, I promise) and then we turned on the Weather Channel to catch a bit of the news regarding the storm that is about to hit. 

As I watched the team of meteorologists forecasting all their theories of patterns in front of colorful swirling maps and the Governor giving warnings and some command center filled with important people in a room in Washington DC and interviews with people who have evacuated, it came to me the contrast. 

And I wonder. 

What if at the first sign of it gathering strength out there in the ocean, long before it hit a small island or was headed to the populated areas of the southeastern United States…what if the whole nation had, as one, fasted and prayed to God to save us?

We will never know, will we?

I do know many, many have been praying though. And I know that there are those who have most likely fasted and I see the progression of the downgrading of this storm from previous predictions. 

So there are some more thoughts for you to mull over…sorry they are scattered…but for me it is time to gather my things and head out. 

Will you come back tomorrow? I promise the concluding thoughts on this are going to encourage you <3

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