Hungering

by Andrew Schumacher

I’m not going to lie. I was hungry during this week’s Wednesday fast. I mean really hungry. I was really really really looking forward to dinner pretty much all day. But more on that in a bit.

Thankfully, this week I was again able to follow largely the same routine I had the week prior: Up early. No food. Prayer & Bible reading. No food. Mid-day worship service. No food. HC open sanctuary. And then that glorious thing, dinner. You see the theme here. I had food on my mind quite a bit.

But other things, too, managed to filter through. Reading Luke again first thing in the morning, I read the part where Pilate has Jesus in custody and calls everyone together to tell them he’s looked things over and can’t find any evidence of this Jesus guy actually inciting a rebellion like all the people accused him of. I’ve probably read or been read that passage dozens of times, but this time I thought to myself, “Hey wait a minute, Pilate got it wrong. Jesus kind of was guilty of causing a pretty big disturbance in the status quo of how people lived, what they thought about community, government, etc– a rebellion if you will.” Once I heard a speaker at a Christian peace/justice conference talk about how to “take up and carry your cross” daily really meant to commit to living as a rebel in the name of Christ. I was reminded of how trying to be a disciple of Christ is serious stuff. We’re not messing around here. Except a lot of the time that’s exactly how I behave– as if I’m casually ascribing to a club that has certain beliefs. Ugh. That’s why this practice of spiritual discipline is so important.

Speaking of discipline, when I went over to the Chicago Temple’s noon time worship service during my lunch hour, we sang an awesome hymn by Charles Wesley “I Want a Principle Within.” Check out the first verse:

I want a principle within of watchful, godly fear,
A sensibility of sin, a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel of pride or wrong desire,
To catch the wandering of my will, and quench the kindling fire.

If Charles Wesley’s other six thousand hymns (seriously 6,000) don’t already prove it, here is an example of a guy who takes his faith seriously. I want a principle within of watchful, godly fear. I want to be that present to God and the Holy Spirit such that I feel my sinful wandering in the deepest part of my soul and allow God to catch and correct it. Incredible.

As I may have mentioned above, I was hungry throughout the day. I was still ok energy-wise, and my stomach cooperated pretty darn well really. But compared to last week, this Wednesday I thought about being hungry more often, and thought about how great dinner was going to be. The fact that Amy and I were going out for an uncharacteristic weekday outing to Flat Top may have contributed to this I suppose. However, we always cook up delicious meals here at the Schumacher household, so I don’t know if the promise of all-you-can-eat Flat Top made much of a difference.

In any case, I was very conscious of how I was hungering in a major way. In this case for food. People talk about hungering for God. And I guess I’ve historically thought of that idea along the lines of loving God and feeling at home in your faith community and wanting to live out the Gospel, etc. All of that is great stuff. But maybe that’s not real hungering. The feeling I had in anticipation of dinner Wednesday night was kind of intense and all-consuming (at least as far as earthly things go). A true hungering for God has got to be like a million times more intense, right? I like to think I’m seeking God most of the time (though even that is wishful thinkin). But hungering for God? I don’t think I can claim that after fasting this week.

Tags: Andrew

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Lent Devotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.