Fat Tuesday

Today is Fat Tuesday and I’m fat enough as it, thank you. Perhaps you know the day by its more fashionable name Mardi Gras. (Everything sounds better in French.) It has always been a day to let it all hang out before forty days of introspection and self denial during Lent. You eat up everything in the house that you aren’t allowed to have when the fasting begins on Ash Wednesday. I currently weigh more than I have ever weighed in my life and I’m out of shape. I could give you excuses about back surgery but they are just that: excuses. A piece of scripture has been hanging over me lately from I Corinthians. “Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit?” If that’s true, I’ve really let the Temple go. It is time to put things in order, not just so I can look better in the mirror, but because the Spirit of God deserves better. During my forty day journey through Lent this year, I  will not be giving up chocolate or abstaining from television. I’m going deeper this year. I want to truly understand what it means to see myself as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Yes, I will be eating better, getting some exercise and losing weight, but not for vanity’s sake. I will be taking care of some “deferred maintenance.” But fixing up the building is a prelude to welcoming in the Holy Spirit. The Presence of God dwelled in the Jerusalem Temple in the “Holy of Holies.” God sat upon the Mercy Seat and only the high priest, who was washed, prayed up, and had put his sin in order, could enter. Now that same Divine Presence dwells in me as a follower of Jesus. This year, I want God to be enthroned in my life. I want to be washed. I want to be prayed up. I want my sin to be put in order. Ash Wednesday starts tomorrow. I think I’ll skip the doughnut and start the journey early this year,

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