As the Christmas train begins to pick up steam (We’re like 40 days away!), I’m wondering how much I should buy this year and how much I should eat. Sorry if this is too personal, but I have a history of overindulgence in both.
At our house we’re aiming to mess up the tracks just a bit by implementing an idea from The Advent Conspiracy: We plan to take a long weekend (Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch) and eat nothing but beans, rice and tortillas. (And maybe an egg or two.) This will be a micro-step toward understanding how some people always eat, toward recognizing that life is more than what we put in our mouths.
In Christian history, we’ve had forebears who’ve gone full bore in this. Ascetics who lived in caves, ate little, wore scraps and never kissed nobody. In the process some went crazy, but others met God in ways I can’t imagine.
Islam doesn’t really celebrate or remember Muslims who’ve done this, though I imagine there must have been some. They do have an ascetic concept called Zuhd. As you’d guess, understanding of Zuhd varies enormously, but one writer captures it like this, “The actual definition of Zuhd is to detach one’s heart from this world.”
“Zuhd means to focus on the next life, but without neglecting one’s portion of this world. . . .Zuhd is necessary for attaining contentment and inner peace.”
If this takes your mind back to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, good for you. “Seek first the Kingdom. . . .” and, well, you know the rest!
Maybe a key thing this Christmas is to not just merrily rattle down the tracks of our culture. Let’s at least sit up and poke our heads out the window once in a while and look around. Maybe grab the stop cord and slow the whole train down. Remember we serve a Savior who on the one hand made wine out of water, but on the other was himself the very bread of life.