Fasting

This morning is a fasting gift.

The hotel is not serving breakfast because of COVID-19. If we had called downstairs last night, they would have prepared a fasting type of breakfast (bread, fruit, coffee) we could have picked up in a bag. We didn’t call down, so no breakfast.

Nothing is open until much later thanks to ‘COVID hours’.

It is as though God is saying, “Here, I’ll help you fast.”

I woke up with a headache and I’m hungry. I started thinking about the poor and remembering what it was like when…

Even at our poorest, we have always had ACCESS to food. Thanks to the hoarding and the virus, we are finally getting a taste of what it means to have to do without some basic things. Coming up north because Mom is in the hospital has created an opportunity to experience additional discomfort. I’m lying here hungry without a way to get food and thinking of those who don’t have the luxury of the confidence of knowing there will be food available at some point today. The luxury of a comfortable bed at home. The safety of knowing there is sanitary medical care available.

Had I not already had most of those supplies that are being hoarded in storage (except hand sanitizer, still have not found that. Just been using soap.) our family would be in a much more uncomfortable position.

That is a pretty impressive gift from God.

I hope this helps ME to be more compassionate and think more often of those around me who are in need. I hope I will use this memory to look for people I can help: The single divorced mom, the drug addict, the elderly, all of these people are invisibly struggling. Many of them will tell us, out of pride, “I don’t need your help. I’m fine. I’ll do without.”

Hopefully it helps us to come together and serve one another with more compassion and gratitude. Hopefully, we can look back at this season and say, “This is when we set aside ourselves and chose to see the other point of view.”

People need to be paid enough to survive and still have a life, time for prayer, and time for rest. Even God rested and that day of rest was a GIFT to US. Rest is when healing takes place.