"Lint? What's that?"

My first exposure to Lent was at the Naval Academy when my Calculus professor had a black smudge on his forehead...and I had no idea why.  Then there was all the talk of "giving up something" for Lent - sodas, chocolate, potato chips.  Still, no idea why.  And to complicate the issue, my Roman Catholic classmates had restrictions on meat...sometimes.    

I didn't attend Lenten services back then or even many Sunday services, yet I somehow associated this time of year with fasting.  So my personal observance of Lent began at college.

Lent is the church season leading up to Easter, and is a time of reflection, repentance, and prayer, a time to remember our sins and God's grace.  Several years ago, I read this on fasting:

 "...both hunger and thirst make us aware of our mortality.  Guess what?  They are supposed to!  That is their theological meaning.  Hunger and thirst are sacraments of our mortality.  They are the felt reminders of the fact that we do not have life within us."  Pastor Louis A. Smith

We do not have life within ourselves.  We have to take in something to live - we take breathing for granted, but we must breathe to survive.  And we have to eat.  To not eat, to not drink, to not breathe...is death.  

Physical hunger reminds me of my spiritual hunger.  My spiritual life, my salvation does not depend on something from inside me.  It can't.  I can't "will myself" to believe or to feel like a Christian.  God's Word and His sacraments work to give me that faith, and, like food to the body, they sustain that faith and help it grow.  

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven...I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”  John 6:32,35

Thinking of my mortality, thinking of my salvation and my need to be fed...puts a different perspective on fasting; now fasting serves to remind me of my salvation, my dependence on Him.  

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Matthew 4:4

Jesus rightly calls Himself the bread of life; He is always feeding, always filling, even when my body hungers.