6:17-18---When you fast, comb your hair, wash your face, look normal not martyr-like...others need not see what you're doing, but God will. He'll see your heart and decide if your fasting is sincere and will make a difference on the answer to your prayers. (I've taken HUGE LIBERTIES with this verse by translating it.) (There is nothing I can do to make God love me more...or less!) Fasting is not commanded except for one day a year, the day of Atonement, and that is for Jews. But here's what I found in a great commentary by John Phillips:
Simeon Stylites, A.D.390-459, did something that awarded him cannonization by the Roman Catholic Church. He ended up living atop a high pole.
"His life on a pole began when he moved to a hillside not far from his monastery and perched on a pillar six feet high. There he sat with an iron collar around his neck, chained to his pole. Periodically the height of the pillar was raised until it was fifty feet high. His disciples had to climb a ladder to bring him such scraps of food as he would condescend to eat. Throughout the bitter cold of thirty Syrian winters and the burning heat of thirty Syrian summers, disdaining any shelter from wind or rain, frost or sun, he sat on his pole and in the end was rewarded by his church with sainthood."
The year changes from 2011 to 2012 in a few hours. I won't say Happy New Year; what does that mean anyway? It sounds like a command...maybe you're not inclined to be happy in the new year...and when does the 'new year' end? Is this an ongoing state of attitude continuing on for...
well, you get the idea. But, I do say, God's blessings on you in 2012.
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