The next several verses of Psalm 51 were yesterday's Bible Song and it's a very familiar passage to me, since one of my favourite worship songs is based on it: "Create in me a pure heart, Oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me" (v. 10-12). I love this because again the focus is on the inner life, where our hearts are at. And I love that we can ask God for things like a steadfast and willing spirit. Too often I try to rely on myself to be faithful and eager to live my life for God. I try to do it on my own, when all I have to do is ask God to help me live the life He's called me to. And the beauty is that when He helps me, I can't boast in what I've accomplished because I was unable to do it on my own strength. What a blessed way to live life.
Yesterday's Bible Reading is from Isaiah 58 and it discusses fasting and what God expects from our fasting. Through Isaiah, God makes it clear that He really doesn't care about the outward appearance of fasting. Rather, He says that the kind of fasting He has chosen is "to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke" and that it is "to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood" (v. 6-7). So fasting at Lent is not about what we give up, but about what we do with the time created by the vacancy of that thing in our lives. Or, if we aren't giving up something time-consuming (i.e. a particular food or beverage), then how we let the missing of that thing affect and/or change our attitude about how we think of and treat others.
Lent is about the condition of our hearts - not just our attitudes, but what we do with those attitudes.
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