February 28, 2012
Fasting
I decided to give up meat and sweets, stay away from social media except on Mondays when I blog, and minimize time spent on my iPhone and watching TV/video. Like Bill (see comment on last week’s post), my hope is to clear out space in my life for God.
This first week, my fast hasn’t been so great. Not being able to eat meat or sweets made me pretty grumpy. On Thursday, the second day of my fast, I found myself in a vile, destructive mood. I felt like punching everyone in the face. Then it passed, like a thunderstorm blowing away, leaving me wondering what had happened. If Jesus’ 40 days in the desert was a test, was I already failing my [about-]40-day test, on Day 2?
But my gut feeling is that God isn’t testing me to see if I fail or not, He’s helping me test out the things that work and don’t work in me. Less like a written test, and more like testing a car to see what parts need replacing. And so I have hope for this period despite last week.
We’ll see how this next week goes. Not eating meat etc. has been ok, aside from grumpiness. Now I’m hoping to be better about filling this space with God.
