- Don't ask, don't tell. Everyone fasts differently. Do what you feel you can and don't discuss it with others - it has the same effect as talking about salary on the job. Someone always feels bad.
- If you blow it, press delete and get back on the wagon. Do not start over at zero.
- Don't wait for the feeling to continue. There will likely be none. This is counterintuitive to your mind and body!
I found myself laying awake early this morning, listening to the symphony of the house. The a/c kicks on. A little boy snores. A baby turns over in her crib. I was awake because I was excited to begin this adventure. Surely this must be God. Nothing else makes sense about looking forward to this time!
I've discovered a new favorite place to read and journal....Zoe's room. If I keep focused on the text I can almost forget how overwhelmingly pink it is. There is a fantastic brown chair in this room. I turned it about 150 degrees, from the corner of the room facing inward to the center of the room facing out the window. Something about looking outward changes the way I hear from God.
Funny how I felt so compelled to cater to the sensory this morning. The more I thought about it, fasting is an incredibly sensory thing. It fully involves every place that you feel. You feel it more than you think about doing it...and therein lies the fast.
Ezekiel 16 was on the docket from our reading schedule, along with Song of Solomon 8:6,7 and Daniel 9. We'll read those last two passages every day. By the end of the forty, they will become so ingrained in us that we will breath them rather than read them. That's my prayer anyway.
The Ezekiel passage was key in our adoption story, although it's sobering to read the whole chapter. It's much easier to stop early in the passage - baby adopted, all is well. Keep reading though and you discover that baby has an (unrighteous) will of her own, and stretches her father's patience beyond the breaking point, where he disciplines her, although even then it's with such love that it's foreign to our way of thinking. Truly, He uses the least amount of pain necessary to turn her heart back to Him.
Ezekiel 16:59,60 says "This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant, yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you...."
My prayer this morning is that we would all return to that covenant walk - that beautiful place of adoption - and know full relationship with Him.
1 comment:
That is seriously beautiful. Having a best friend who is adopted has given me a new perspective on my own life. She is a story of total acceptance of someone who isn't flesh (but with God we are flesh, but it is still hard to accept). The totality of the acceptance is undeniable and unquestioned.
How often do we look at our own adoption unquestioned. Knowing with no doubt whatsoever that we are fully adopted?
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