ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET

As I finish reading Jen Hatmaker's book 7: AN EXPERIMENTAL MUTINY AGAINST EXCESS, and condsider the periods of fasting our ministry is walking through and our church will soon participate in as part of the Lenten Season, I meditate on these quotes from it:

"At some point, the church stopped living the Bible and decided just to study it, culling the feast parts and whitewashing the fast parts. We are addicted to the buffet, skillfully discarding the costly discipleship required after consuming. The feast is supposed to sustain the fast, but we go back for seconds and thirds and fourths, stuffed to the brim and fat with inactivity. All this is for me. My goodness, my blessings, my privileges, my happiness, my success. Just one more plate"

*"When the fast, the death, the sacrifice of the gospel is omitted from the Christian life, then it isn't Christian at all. Not only that, it's boring. If I just want to feel good or get self-help, I'll buy a $12 book from Borders and join a gym. The church the Bible described is exciting and adventurous and wrought with sacrifice. It cost believers everything and they still came. It was good news to the poor and stumped its enemies. The church was patterned after a Savior who had no place to lay his head and voluntarily died a brutal death, even knowing we would reduce the gospel to a self-serving personal improvement program where people were encouraged to make a truce witht heir Maker and stop sinning and join the church, when in fact the gospel does not call for a truce but a complete surrender"
Oh Lord, help us.