Friday after Ash Wednesday, March 7, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Gymnastics
Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!
At P Terry’s where we had lunch there’s a sandbox outside. Combine sticky Coke fingers and sand, then soak your feet – not exactly a miracle of alchemy. Miles thought he might need to throw up. Too much Dr. Pepper! He wondered how hard that would be to clean up in the car. Both of them spent an hour running, jumping and bending on gymnastics bars before lunch. They were hungry.
Jasper doesn’t eat much right now, and Miles doubles up on everything he can. When we go out I love the leftovers I get from Jazz and am incredulous watching Miles eat everything in sight. At breakfast at our house on Monday he ate a bowl of cereal, three balls of Brazilian cheese bread and wanted more.
After my fast on Ash Wednesday I ate a bowl of cereal and vanilla yogurt, and then plenty of lunch at P Terry’s. I think we’re having a shrimp dish for dinner, and it sounds wonderful to me. Yesterday, just as my pastor warned, I thought about food over and over, every time my stomach grumbled. Growl, growl, fizz, fizz. Then suddenly my hunger disappeared. I still thought about food, but it didn’t hurt. And then those thoughts about my body disappeared as well.
I slept all night, and even in the morning I didn’t think much about eating. Something heavy lifted off my body and my mind. I kind of felt like fasting longer.
How this is related to my spiritual life, to my sense of God’s presence doesn’t need to be explained, at least not to me. I am satisfied to get a mental glimpse of something invisible but tangible, a connecting fiber between my body, my mind, my spirit and my Maker.
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.
David committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, who was away at the battlefront, one of David’s most faithful soldiers. Nathan confronted David with a puzzle. One man had a flock of sheep and another man had one. The rich man took the single sheep of his servant, killed her and prepared for a feast. What should happen next?
David was angry, swearing justice for the servant. “The man who did this certainly deserves to die!” (2 Samuel 12) Then Nathan looked him in the eye. Nathan’s gaze did not swerve away. “You are that man!” he said quietly and firmly to his king.
David fell to his knees. “I have sinned against the Lord!”
Nathan told David that God had taken away his sin, but that his family would see much trouble. Later, perhaps that very day, David wrote Psalm 51. He follows his confession with praise and pleading:
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
The last three lines we sang every Sunday in our Lutheran church where I grew up. I sing them often today. We say them on Ash Wednesday, and after confession many other days of the year. The words of David rescue me often from despair over my own failures. I am sure they rescue you, too.
Set free the oppressed and break every yoke.
Share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless.
Clothe the naked and never turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
You shall call the Lord will answer, “Here I am!”
(Isaiah 58, Psalm 51, Amos 5, Matthew 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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