If you read this blog much, you know I don’t watch much television; HGTV is pretty much my last addiction there, and I peruse it less and less these days.

So you’ll understand part of why I applaud Dan Edelen’s suggestion (prompted by the demise of his TV) in Fumbling the Torch over at his blog Cerulean Sanctum.

Once you read Dan, you’ll understand the full reason I applaud both the idea and his blog – and why it’s one of my daily stops on my blogging circuit.

It’s amazing, though, how many times my thoughts turned to a craving for sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water.

But it’s also pretty amazing that, after only two Lenten fasts under my more comfortably-fastened belt, how easy it is to turn those thoughts to prayer, to thankfulness for how blessed I am to have sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water available at every turn. Some folks in the world are dying for a drink of plain pure water. Literally.

So I’m looking into ways that the money I deny the beverage-vending machines can be funneled to an outreach that’s trying to provide that drink of plain pure water to the folks who need it most.

You can’t just pick one on the Internet. You can never be sure, that way, into whose pockets your spare change will end up. If you have contact with one that you have found beyond reproach, I’d be glad to hear from you!

Now I have to back up and correct a possible misperception.

I didn’t begin fasting at Lent in 2005.

Angi and I have fasted and prayed together and separately a number of times before that. The first time was when we began in earnest our adoption process, and the answer to our prayers was Matthew, now 14. Another time was when we filed again, and the answer was Laura, now 10.

Another time was when my father died suddenly at home but was revived too late by paramedics. While his coma persisted several weeks, even when he breathed on his own after being removed from the life-support equipment, I fasted and prayed for his full recovery. The answer was his final demise.

And I understood how King David felt when he said of his perished infant son, “He will not come to me, but I will go to him.”

If prayer for some folks is the end of a rope, fasting is the end of another rope that can help tie your life back together. They’re almost always tied together in scripture – with two notable exceptions: the story of Esther, and the account of Jesus’ fast in the desert before being tempted by Satan.

The absence of a mention of prayer in Esther is kinda understandable; God isn’t even mentioned. But He’s there, all the same. The story could not have turned out the way it did had He not be an active character as every moment of the drama unfolded. So if Esther and her handmaidens were not praying in accord with their fasting, why did they bother? Were they just dieting under these extreme circumstances? Helping Esther shed a few unglamorous pounds so that she’d have a better chance that her husband the king would hold out his scepter to her; admit her in to plead the case for her people?

If not fasting and prayer, then why fasting at all?

I believe the same may be true of the other instance. The synoptic gospel writers chose, for their own mute reasons, only to mention that Jesus went out to the desert alone, and fasted. Why? For His health? Some folks may claim that total fasting can improve your health, but I can’t imagine that forty days of it would be that helpful.

I believe He prayed. I believe that He knew that the Spirit was leading Him out into the desert to be tempted by the devil, and that His ministry could not begin in earnest until the two of them had faced off. I believe He knew that the best preparation was to talk directly to His Father, reminded each moment of His dependence on providence to sustain Him in every way; reminded by each pang of hunger and each moment of light-headedness and each stumbling attempt to overcome hideous physical weakness.

I believe Jesus went from a husky, strong, hammer-wielding carpenter to a gaunt, frail, dirty, nearly-powerless, suffering servant for a good reason. He demonstrated His willingness to become His Father’s Son; to serve as high priest of His people. I don’t think the writer of Hebrews is referring exclusively to the Passion when he says of Jesus:

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” – Hebrews 5:7-10

It says “days,” you see; “days” plural. Not just that last day. “Days.”

I think it’s quite possible that Jesus had a pretty good idea of the endgame even at this point in the desert; even before the game was afoot. He knew He needed to be prepared for what was to come – for more than the temptations Satan would prod him with at the end of the forty-day fast. There would be temptations to use His might to benefit Himself, rather than His God and His people, every day and every mile and every town and every moment.

Temptations to call down fire on the ungodly. Temptations to pay no Roman tax. Temptations to comfort a woman of ill-repute kneeling at His feet, and to do so in a more sexually satisfying way. Temptations to give it up when His cousin was murdered. Temptations to cut and run when people wanted to chuck Him off of a cliff. Temptations to heal everyone and leave no doubt. Temptations to summon ten legions of angels.

Even temptations during those forty days of fasting – unprompted by spoken devilish words – to break that fast and just get started with His ministry.

So, to me, it is inconceivable that Jesus’ fasting was not accompanied by prayer.

If there were types of demons that could only be cast out by fasting and prayer, I believe He was using whatever it took to make certain there were none that would defeat Him.

There are times when prayer alone just isn’t enough. So, obviously, fasting by itself can’t be enough.

They’re a package deal, fasting and prayer.

You can be sure that I won’t be fasting this Lenten season just for the sake of fasting this Lenten season. This fast will be balanced by prayer, much prayer, and for a lot of concerns, a lot of hopes, a lot of beloved brothers and sisters.

And for a lot plain, pure water.

I’m not a Greek scholar, and I don’t play one on TV.

However, I understand that kenosis, in New Testament Greek terms, is a word which describes paring-down, shedding excess, maybe even doing more with less. I suppose it can include fasting, if you want to read it that way, and so I choose to read it that way. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, and survived it.

At any rate, I’m going into a season of kenosis beginning this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. I have a good example for it: a Savior who fasted in the desert 40 days while being tempted by the Accuser. (Hard to accuse Someone who’s perfect; best just to play to His needs and wants.)

So I’m going to try to need and want less for the 40 days following Wednesday as I have for the previous couple of years. But this year will be a little different. My first year, I weaned myself off of my beloved Mountain Dew for an entire Lenten season. Last year I parted with soft drinks laced with caffeine. This Lent, I’m going to try to temporarily break my addiction to soft drinks entirely.

It’ll just be good ol’ Ozarka or Mountain Valley Water, or the chilled, filtered stuff from my refrigerator’s front door.

And in the spirit of fasting preferred by Isaiah (ch. 58), I’ll be tossing the unspent beverage coinage into a receptacle to benefit a far greater need than my craving for sugary beverages.

It won’t stop there. I’m hoping to fast from indolence as well. I intend to find some active, physical ways to actually do some of God’s work instead of just writing and talking about it. I have some things in mind, but haven’t prayed about them fully yet – so they’re not ready for sharing yet.

But I would welcome your prayers and support in my fast – and would be glad to challenge anyone who feels intrigued by it to join me and millions of other Christian folks in this season of kenosis.

Angi is drafting a workbook to accompany the group study of her colleague Darryl Tippens’ book Pilgrim Heart, and while perusing her work – and remembering Darryl’s from our LIFE Group’s study of it last summer and fall – it became “real” to me that God’s intention for us all along was to be on a journey.

Israel got in trouble when no longer bound for the promised land, but when they had occupied it – when they felt they had arrived, and were no longer on the journey.

They failed to exterminate the foreign gods. They coveted and stole the property to be wholly dedicated to God. Their worship at the tabernacle and temple became rote. Then they forgot to meditate on the law of God daily, and to read the law annually, and to live it out constantly.

Pretty much the same way that I live, and maybe that you live. I don’t drive out the things more important than God in my life. I want things more than I want Him. My worship becomes dutiful, but not heartfelt. I neglect God’s word for my life.

I feel I’ve “arrived,” as a Christian; blessed with grace and forgiveness. I don’t see my own distance from God anymore, or my life looking less and less like His Son’s instead of more and more like it. I’ve left the journey, and taken up comfortable residence in myself.

Oh, I’m not a horrible person; I don’t try to drown little fishes or pull the wings off of puppies.

I’m just all about me.

And I need to hear the call – like Abraham, like Moses, like Nehemiah, like Saul of Tarsus – to get up and get out of me and get on the road to a land that God will show me and a people yet un-reborn.

I put off seeing Bruce Almighty for a long time. I didn’t go see it at the theaters. I didn’t rent it. I enjoy a good Jim Carrey flick – maybe more than the next average guy – but I didn’t expect to like Bruce at all.

More accurately, I didn’t expect to like the depiction of God in Bruce.

Finally, a very obviously-sanitized version of the movie came on USA Network last week while I was sick and, having nothing better to do, I took it in.

And I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised. Morgan Freeman’s version of the Deity was someone you would actually like – and someone who would actually like you, even though knowing everything about you. This God would take time out to page you on your phone and pull a cheap stunt or two to get you off-balance and chat with you and trust you with ultimate power … well, within a fourteen-block area of Buffalo, New York, anyway. Without neglecting everyone else, he would still care enough about you to let you learn the hard way that your girl – with whom you have been unforgiveably selfish – prays about you every night, until she just can’t pray any more.

He’d listen to your questions: “How do you make people love you without interfering with free will?” Answer: “Welcome to my world.”

He would even help you learn how to pray. Not just a little peace-on-earth-wish-from-a-Miss-America-candidate kind of prayer, but one that comes straight out of your heart and your unselfishness and your own love.

So I actually wondered: In spite of all the flaws, pratfalls and downright inaccuracies that any movie Hollywood makes about God must have, is it possible that Hollywood sometimes actually hits the mark?

In the first of the Oh, God movies, George Burns as the Deity takes a turn at answering mankind’s questions, posed through grocer John Denver. High on the list: “Is Jesus your son?” The answer: “Jesus was my son. Buddha was my son. The guy who overcharged for this room-service steak is my son. Next question.”

Corny, politically-correct drivel, right? Sure. And perfectly true. Evangelical Christianity wants to claim God as its exclusive property, and vice-versa. It says, “Validate me! Tell them I’m right, God!” But God isn’t in that business. Everyone is His child … some already adopted; others waiting. There weren’t any that He didn’t send Jesus to redeem.

Too bad the movie’s God didn’t have a stronger message than “You can make it work.”

That’s the same message you hear from too many of evangelical Christianity’s televised prophets. “You can make it work,” they’ll tell you; “… and God wants to make it work for you.”

So buy God in the convenient cosmic size, good for all uses and guaranteed to work for you. God wants you to have it all!

Not the God I read about in scripture. He’s truly almighty. The kind of God people fall down in front of and beg for rocks to fall on them; the kind of God before whom people feel so unworthy to speak that they’d only feel cleansed by having their tongues cauterized by a burning coal. He’s no chummy fellow bent on blessing exclusively me or exclusively you. He’s more pragmatic. He agrees with comedian Stephen Wright’s musing: “You can’t have it all. Where would you put it?” And more importantly, would you spend more of yourself trying to figure out how to keep it, rather than redistribute it to help those who have nothing? The God I read about just says, “Come work for Me. Help it work out right for others. You don’t have to worry about yourself; I’ll take care of you.”

Morgan Freeman’s Deity returns to bedevil (sorry; couldn’t help myself) the hapless anchor of the news station in Buffalo in an upcoming sequel, Evan Almighty. You remember Evan, don’t you? The poor fellow that omnipotent Bruce terrorized by forcing him to babble incoherently during his first moments as anchor? In this go-around, he’s being asked to build an ark.

In a preview, Evan sees the Deity in the back seat of his car via the rear-view mirror and goes absolutely blithering beserk. “Let it all out, son,” he is encouraged. “It’s the beginning of wisdom.”

Yeah.

We could all use a bit of that.

This Christmas could have gone a lot worse. I started feeling puny while operating the A/V booth Wednesday night at church, went home and to bed – and by the middle of the night, was running a 102-degree fever and enduring miserable sinusitis pains. I was too sick to go to work the next day, rallied enough Friday to put Sunday’s worship PowerPoints into EasyWorship and to print the orders of worship, then came home and crashed while the rest of my family went out to a Christmas dinner with (and at the treat of) our dear friends, the Rowes.

Saturday morning, Laura discovered that her second mouse Carmel had squeezed out of his cage and into Tuxedo’s. Tuxedo is her brother’s mouse, who welcomed Carmel pretty visciously. Angi and Laura had to take the poor thing to the vet to be put out of his suffering. Then later in the day, Angi took me to the family clinic for a shot – but I survived it.

Sunday morning I was still too far under the weather to be able to go to worship, but I heard it was wonderful: one service at 9:00 a.m., people packed into pews and folding chairs like subway riders (you thought I’d say “sardines,” but sardines don’t sit in pews, folding chairs or subways).

But on Christmas morning I felt good enough to lumber downstairs and open gifts, have breakfast, and relax – even entertain a luncheon guest for a while. It was really a very lovely Christmas.

All those nights when I’d be awakened by almost-hourly hacking-and-wheezing fits, I could go back to sleep pretty easily by thinking about my New Year’s resolutions.

Until last night, when it suddenly occurred to me that all of my new year’s resolutions were about me.

Well, of course they were, you might think; you can’t make somebody else’s for them (which is sometimes a pity…).

No, I mean they were things about me that I wanted for my own sake: To look better. To be perceived better. To feel better about myself.

I didn’t have resolutions that were achievable goals about wanting to become a better listener … more generous … more cooperative and collaborative … more forgiving; less judgmental.

It was good to have achievable goals. But they really need to benefit others and glorify God, first of all.

I have a feeling if I pursue those goals, no one will care greatly whether I’m fourteen pounds overweight or sporadic at blogging or behind on a long-term project or any of those others. Least of all, me.

And 2007 will go better for everybody.

I have religious friends and kinfolk who beleive in good conscience that Christmas can be celebrated, but only – as the traditional term in the prayer between the Lord’s Supper and collection goes – “separate and apart” from any religious connotation.

It’s okay, in other words, to exchange gifts and take your children to sit on Santa’s lap at the mall – but it is condemned by the silence of scripture to mention the gifts of the visiting Magi, or to talk about St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra.

The logic of this conclusion simply escapes me.

Jesus celebrated traditions that predated His incarnation. He went to temple … well, to synagogue. Nowhere in Old Testament scripture is synagogue required, authorized or condemned. Does Jesus stand condemned for violating the silence of scripture?

He also clearly opposed the then-current teaching about keeping the Sabbath – which was, scripturally, to be kept holy to the Lord – in order to heal a man on that day of rest. He even seemed to advocate rescuing an unfortunate animal on the Sabbath; for He is Lord of the Sabbath, and it was made for man – not vice-versa. Does Jesus stand condemned for violating the clear instruction of scripture?

When angels in heavenly host sang so loudly at the birth of the Savior-King that shepherds could hear them in their fields that night, were they in violation of keeping heaven’s silence? Or if they had withheld their praise and celebration, would the rocks and stones themselves begun to sing – as Jesus said during his triumphal entry into Jerusalem years later?

And when we give gifts, do we not imitate our Lord Jesus, His Father and His Spirit – who have made an eternal career of gifting mankind with what we need most? Do we not mimic the generosity of the Christ who gave up everything in heaven to be born, live, teach, die and live again among us?

Christmas a merely secular holiday?

Bah.

Humbug.

Christmas is crunch-time. And I’m not talking about snow.

It’s time to hike it all up a notch; time to want less and give more; time to be the wisest shopper and the most generous heart and the most pious Christian. It’s time to entertain and be entertained; to party and throw parties; to overextend, overeat, overdo, over-achieve.

All to honor the Baby in the manger.

Because that, of course, is what happened the night He was born. Joseph and Mary invited the Shepherds and the Kings and any other neighbors over and threw a big bash – even though dreadfully tired from travel and improvisation at lodging and probably a few hours of labor.

Then the Kings were, maybe, a couple of years late and almost missed the party heading down to Egypt for a really big time. Their stellar navigation thing evidently had gone out while they were in transit and they had to go ask Herod for directions.

To make up for it, they probably went a bit overboard on the shower gifts, but hey, it’s the holidays – and you only get one chance to fete a baby, right?

Even a Baby who has come to give the gift of reduced expectations.

I believe that.

I believe He came so that we wouldn’t have to worry about eternal damnation. Or about having too much stuff. About toiling and spinning and spending and having and storing-in-barns and moths and rust and thieves. He came to tell us to ask, and we would receive; to seek, and we would find; to knock, and the door would be opened to us.

Even if it was the door to a stable. Or a prison. Or an arena full of hungry wild animals ringed by horrific wild pagans.

He came to encourage us to give that last mite in the temple treasury; to give without expecting to receive in return; to give of ourselves lavishly and extravagantly to people we barely know, or don’t know at all. He came to ask us to sell our possessions and give to the poor, with no expectation that we could ever redistribute so evenly that there would never again be the poor.

He came to give us the expectation that we would be reviled and persecuted and accused falsely.

He came to tell us to expect a cross – and when crunch-time came, He let Himself be nailed to it – all so we could share a crown with Him. Because He would never ask us to do anything He wasn’t willing to do Himself.

And He gave us something far more precious than wealth or power or worldly blessings or high expectations.

He gave us hope.

I’ve had a year and a half to think about things since my last post on this subject, What Isn’t Hell Like?. I’ve read a little of Edward Fudge’s thoughts on annihilation as a good explanation of what “eternal punishment” means.

And I’m wondering …

What if hell isn’t eternal – at least for us mortal folk? Suppose the “hades” aspect of it really was just a holding tank for those before Jesus’ time on earth, awaiting His judgment? And that, at the time His judgment came, it was tanked in the lake of fire for all time?

What if hell – the eternal, ever-burning, lake-of-fire aspect of it – is reserved for the devil and his angels: created, half-eternal beings who knew God and yet rebelled against Him? Because they were created to be eternal from that point on; created to be close to Him and still stood against everything good about Him?

What if eternal punishment is simply that those of us mortals who were created to choose immortality close to God – yet never having seen Him except through His creation and the story of His Son – we choose death when we choose to be anything other than closer to God? Forever-death? Irrevocable, un-appealable and unappealing permanent nonexistence?

When we had the chance to choose to be with Him forever, instead?

When we had the choice to be like Him, and carry His story forward, and live it out each mortal day?

When we were appointed to judge angels by showing them that the right choice could be made in faith and not just by sight alone, making their crime of rebellion all the more heinous?

Isn’t “eternal death” the opposite of “eternal life”? Rather than its opposite being “eternal torture”?

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23

And why is there something deep within me that wonders how a God – even a God of great righteousness and unimpeachable wrath – can be just in dispensing eternal torture to rebels whose sins were temporal; choices made blindly and in lack of faith?

I haven’t blogged much recently, and I regret that.

I think I know what Saul must have felt like when the Spirit departed from him, and I can understand why David begged God not to take Him away.

I hope mine is just the kind of dry spell that Jerusalem had during its time of Ichabod; when the ark had been stolen away and the glory had departed. I hope inspiration will soon return, and when it does I will not take many steps before I offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

In the meantime – broaden your horizons. Read some blogs and books and passages of scripture that you have never read before. Read old favorites in a new way, with a fresh perspective. Listen for God.

If He seems silent, endure Ichabod.

Maybe He has some threshing and refining to do in your life, too.