From Lyn Woodruff, posted in the River Prayer Reflections Texting Group. If you'd like to join, write to info@riversouthbay.org or post a comment.
“It’s so weird to live in this world. What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls. It is so disorienting to fret over aged-out foster kids while saving money for a beach vacation.
Is it even OK to have fun when there is so much suffering in our communities and churches and world? What does it say about us when we love things like sports, food travel, and fashion in a world plagued with hunger and human trafficking?”
We have to remember that God “invented apples and beaches and sex and baby lambs”....
We have to remember that “God gave humanity many healing tools...
that God gives us both Good News and GOOD times....
And those good times...they matter, they are to be consumed and enjoyed with gusto, despite suffering, even in the midst of suffering....and neither cancels out the other”- Jen Hatmaker, Of Mess and Moxie
Yet in Lent, we have this time to reflect upon where we may have distorted the “good times and the good things”....where they no longer serve as healing tools, but may have become cracks where strongholds and bondages can take up space and dwell, cloud our souls, and dull our radiance to shine the Good News!
This is why we are invited to fast in Lent.
Here’s a short video about the importance of entering into this Spiritual Discipline during Lent.
We hope that it will help you recover this practice at its deepest roots in Biblical history, and not just as a surviving Catholic tradition during Lent.
And remember tomorrow is the Sabbath....so go enjoy that piece of cheesecake or chocolate or social media (or whatever you are fasting from)with gusto and thank God for all of His goodness.
I know I will, along with a glass of wine🍷
Shalom✨✨✨
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