Hey everybody this is Steve, and are you giving up anything for Lent this year?
Sometimes people talk about giving something up for Lent
whether its pizza or sweets or video games, or something we like.
But thats not exactly how the Church talks about it.
First of all Lent can be really challenging,
but thank God it's not something we do alone.
And the Church doesn't ask us to give up anything.
Instead the Church invites all of us to pray more, to fast more, to serve more.
To prepare ourselves as a Church to celebrate the Resurrection.
And when it comes to food remember, the things we give up,
hamburgers, hot dogs, whatever it might be, aren't bad.
Just like our bodies, food is good! Its a part of God's creation!
Normally in the Church we talk about fasting as discipline.
For many of us, food is something automatic.
We want something, so we eat it.
In fact for many of us were so blessed that we can eat
anything we want anytime we want to.
During the Christmas fast we talked about how fasting can help us appreciate the food we have.
It does that, and more.
Fasting invites us to take a step back,
to not automatically respond to our cravings.
Fasting invites us to think a little bit more
about what we eat.
Fasting is an exercise of our will and shapes how we make choices.
It helps us realize that what we should do, and what we want to do
aren't always the same thing.
We should want to be kind and generous and loving,
but let's be honest, we don't always want to be.
In the moment it might feel better to be angry, selfish, or worse.
The choice to fast is a pretty small one
but it can help us to make bigger choices down the road.
We can't run a marathon if we can't run a shorter race.
And we can't lift something really heavy, if we can't lift something light.
Saying "no" to meat for forty days might not be the toughest or the most important choice we ever make,
but it will help us with more important choices in other situations.
Christ helped us to realize this in the Parable of the Talents.
In that parable a rich man traveled far away from home,
and he left his servants with different amounts of money.
And when he returned, he asked them what they did with it.
The servant that received five talents had ten,
and the one that received two, now had four.
When the lord saw this he was happy, and said:
The lord saw that they chose wisely when it came to small responsibilities,
so he rewarded them with bigger responsibilities, because he saw they were ready.
Eating meat or drinking milk isn't a sin,
but having the discipline to fast can help us overcome sin in other situations.
You see, if we're doing it right, fasting and prayer
go hand in hand.
When its the middle of Lent, and I'm craving pepperoni pizza
it's a chance for me to take a step back and think about what's important.
I can go without pizza for forty days
but I can't even go a moment without God.
When we think through our choices
we think about why we're making those choices.
We bring our minds to God.
We could pray
Even when fasting is about the food,
its not really about the food.
Its about the choices we make.
Its about having the discipline to always choose love.
Its about having the discipline to always choose God.
So let's Be the Bee and develop discipline with our fasting.
Be the Bee, and #LiveOrthodoxy!
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I'll see you all next week!