My Hope

It’s Ramadan, a time of fasting for Muslims everywhere. They are called to abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset for a month as one of the five pillars of Islam. My friend shared that she only fasts for part of it and talked about how hard it is to fast. My friend’s husband isn’t fasting and was told by other Muslims that if he didn’t fast, he wasn’t Muslim. As a Christian, I believe you can be a Christian without fasting. It is not the act of doing or not doing something that unites us to Christ. Rather it is our faith in him. She started asking questions about Christians and fasting. I found myself wondering how to answer her though. As Christians, it is not a requirement to fast but we are called to fast. Matthew 6:16-18 doesn’t say ‘if we fast’ but rather ‘when we fast’. It isn’t an ‘if/then’ statement. We often turn to Matthew 6 and examine the Lord’s prayer, but when we look at it as a whole and see the big picture, what amazing instruction Jesus gi...

Isaiah 50:4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. As a mother with an infant, everybody always asks about sleep. Generally speaking, V is pretty good about sleeping through the night (she usually wakes up once, eats and goes right back to sleep), though she doesn’t really have a great nap routine yet. I think it just comes with the territory of being the third. You just have to sleep when you can, wherever you can. Our trip back home left me feeling sleep deprived though. It started when she slept well in the car and decided to stay up the first night instead (I’m not complaining- I much prefer that to the wails that could have insued on the way down). Then there were a few nights I did it to myself because I wanted to visit people so I stayed up late and got up early (plus woke up for her in the middle of the night). By t...