watching the food channel while on a fast

NOTE:  The following was written while I was on my three day fast recently.

I am watching the Food Channel and Paula Dean is making something for her husband and her for supper. She says it is a romantic dinner. I’ve seen her husband and he looks like he likes to eat.

It all looks good, and I can almost swear I can smell it.

The only problem is that I am on a fast. I have been for three days. We are fasting toward the National Day of Prayer and plan to go to the state capitol in Lincoln at noon for a city-wide prayer meeting.

Now why would a guy who was on a fast watch the Food Channel.

I don’t really know. I am not all that hungry, although Ella has been fasting all day today and she says she is.
But here I am, on a fast, watching Paula Deen make some stuff for dinner. Canapes, steak (filet mignon), other stuff, and dessert. Since I am on a low carb diet, it has been a while since I enjoyed dessert.

And I am not going to eat a single thing. But here I am, on a fast, watching the Food Channel.

There is a certain disconnect there. I guess it shows something about my character, but I don’t know what.
I remember in 1997 when I fasted for 30 days before the National Day of Prayer. I was walking through the grocery store buying groceries (I was cooking for my family and several others at the time). It occurred to me how strange it was to be shopping for food that I was not going to eat.

We do that a lot in other ways. Kind of like the guy who collects beer paraphernalia but who doesn’t drink.

Or the guy who collects car posters but doesn’t have a driver’s license. Or the Christian who has a collection of Bibles displayed prominently but never reads them.

I suppose all of us do stuff that others consider strange.

But God loves us anyway and it is he who takes up the slack where we leave off and makes us whole.

So even if we do weird things that sometimes make no sense, in him we are perfect and whole. He loves us in spite of the quirks.

Maybe I’ll make that asparagus dish Thursday.