This year for Lent I decided to give up soda. The spiritual activity that prepares us to truly celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the excruciating sacrificial death of being crucified ….and I am giving up soda! WOW!
You don’t need to tell me, I myself, feel such a wimp!
Even worse, I’m really struggling. I’ve lost count of how many lunch times I’ve craved a cold Diet Pepsi. We’re only just past half way and if I didn’t think God could see me – I’d quit.
Today I was reading of an older Christian guy from the US who moved to Kenya. He went there not as a pastor or as a church leader but simply as a helper. He and his wife gave up everything they had here and moved to Kenya just to help, to do whatever is needed. Due to what’s happened in Kenya over the past few weeks they are living as displaced persons in a foreign country with nothing. Although they could have come back to the US they have chosen to stay and stay because of Jesus. And I’m struggling to not have a Diet Pepsi!
[Check out this blog-site to keep you involved with an amazing Msafara by Kenyan pastors http://msafara.wordpress.com/ as they lead the healing and reconciliation in Kenya.]
This kind of story to highlight my wimpiness could be retold a thousand times and more by huge heroes of the faith.
So here’s the odd thing. I feel a wimp for just giving up soda. I feel a total wimp for struggling to give it up. Yet, every lunch time when I deny the urge and drink water with my Subway I receive this incredible spiritual high! (I hope it’s not because at my core I’m Scottish, and an ex-Scottish banker and the buck I’ve saved at lunch time is really my reason for this spiritual high.)
How strange is spiritual formation?!
How strange is the discipline of denial? It seems too relative!
Compared to what my friends displaced in Kenya are doing and giving, my wimpish Lent denial seems utterly nothing.
Yet, for us both at nearly the opposite ends of the denial spectrum …we meet the same God, we receive the same spiritual strengthening.
I know this to be true because I know of extreme times in our lives when Carolyn and I have given up huge things – family, country, and career. And the amazing thing – in giving up my Diet Pepsi the victory I sense from that gives me a similar spiritual experience as when we gave up our jobs to follow Christ.
Weird!
Or is it more - wonderful!!!
How neat is our God?
He views the ordinary and the extraordinary as both means of grace to reveal himself to us.
God meets us equally in the small as well as the big!
This is the theology of grace.
Jesus once told a parable that astounds everybody. Some guys are hanging out waiting for work and early in the morning they’re hired. Later in the day some other guys get hired – like the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the day – those who worked from early morning to sundown and the guys who work only a few hours – all get the same pay!
[Check out Matthew 20]
Grace is not only how we receive God’s salvation, it’s also how we live in His salvation.
It’s the theology of the body …..the hidden or small parts are of equal value to the prominent big parts!
This is God.
I love this about God.
You can experience God washing your pots and pans …as much as having done a 40 day prayer and fasting exercise.
You can experience God in the high of an intense worship service …but also singing in the shower.
You can experience God in giving up everything to go and serve him in some foreign country …..and also by struggling to give up soda for Lent.
It’s as if God is inviting all to experience him – at all times, everywhere, in everyway!
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