Ripe

I love Jesus.  If I didn’t, there is no way I would have eaten macaroni and hot dogs for dinner.  Today is the first day of this fast which actually felt like a fast. 

I spent my $7, $7 on strawberries today.  My neighbor and I drove up to the quaint, hill country town of Fredericksburg for some U Pick ‘Em strawberries.  This normally would have been the season for peaches, but the unseasonably cold weather earlier in the spring produced a bum crop of peaches, and extended the life of the strawberry.  I really wasn’t even thinking about my seven fast, but when we went to pay for the fruits of our labor, and it came up $14, it seemed perfect.  Seven for me and seven for my kids.  We sat at the picnic table under the shade tree and ate until our hearts were content.

This evening I agreed to babysit my friend’s two girls while she and her husband got away for a birthday dinner celebration.  I told her not to worry about dinner for the girls, that we’d get something when they got here.  I thought maybe we would go to McDonald’s, but then I remembered I had already spent my $7 for the day, so I couldn’t justify buying a dinner for me.  When I asked the girls what they wanted for dinner, the four year old answers, “I like mac and cheese, and hot dogs.”  Under the terms of my fast, I can buy food at the grocery store for meals, I just can’t buy something for me specifically.  If I buy it, it has to be a community item.  The thought of eating mac and cheese for dinner, when I know that I have enough money in my wallet to get sushi is not easy, and if I didn’t love Jesus, I would have surely feasted on sushi while my little guests ate their dinner of choice.  You see, mac and cheese is below me.  I’m not a kid, and I’m not poor, and I don’t have to eat mac and cheese.  Sushi tastes better, is better for me, and makes me feel kinda hip when I eat it.

But then there is Jesus.  Listen to what He said:

And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him.  And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.  For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And He took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves.  For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”  Luke 22: 14-18

You see in a sense, Jesus is fasting for us.  He is waiting until the fulfillment of the kingdom of God to share the Passover meal with us.  When we fast, we are joining Him in His current state.  I think that is why our prayers are fast tracked when we fast.  We are joining ourselves with our LORD, and our hearts are joined together in a covenant relationship.

I’m in a covenant relationship with the friend that asked me to babysit today.  I pray for her and her husband every day.  I would have cancelled any plans to help her out.  All she needed to do is ask, and I would have done it.  This is the same relationship that we enter into with Jesus, when we join Him in a fast.  How much more is He willing to “drop everything” to help us out.