Hunny!  40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood

Day 1 – Ash Wednesday

To Read:

Pooh was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that branch …

Crack!

He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again.

And the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin.

(Winnie the Pooh – Chapter 1 )

From the Scriptures:

Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” 

(Matthew 25v24-25)

But when the younger son came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” 

(Luke 15v17-19)

To Reflect:

“It all comes, I suppose,” he decided, as he said good-bye to the last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush, “it all comes of liking honey so much. Oh, help!”

On this the first day of Lent I try to put one thing ‘I have done that I should not have done’ (or one thing I should have done but then chose not to do) at the forefront of my mind as I go to the front of the church to receive Ashes on my forehead.  After all if I am going to ‘Turn away from sin and believe the Good News’ it may help to have at least one particular sin to turn away from!  Sadly, I suspect as do others, I have a whole smörgåsbord from which to choose.  With Pooh, as I try and extricate myself from yet another of gorse bushes of life, I sigh and say, “it all comes of liking honey so much. Oh, help!”.  In place of ‘honey’ feel free to insert whichever is your personal favourite peccadillo.

For this reason one of the chief tools the faithful have to help them on the journey towards Easter is that of fasting.  Not simply fasting from different forms of food – after all how could we cope for 40 days without any of the sweet things of life such as honey?  (Thankfully Sundays in Lent remain Feast Days on which no fasting is allowed).   The fast we need is not from particular types of food but instead refraining from unhelpful behaviours in the hope of replacing them with healthy and godly ones.

Yes, denying oneself a favourite treat and giving away the money that one would have spent on our sweetmeats to a good cause can be a good thing but it is not an end in and of itself.  

Fasting is not about giving up on stuff but instead is about giving up on the direction we face.  

The One Talent Slave (Matthew 25v24-25) gave up on money but did nothing with it.  On the other hand the Younger Son having wasted all the money gave up on following his own ways and, just as Pooh in his need calls out to Christopher Robin says, ‘I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;’ (Luke 15v18).

Today we are given the opportunity, whenever we get it wrong, whenever we are tempted to bury God’s gifts to us, whenever we have fallen down, to learn that  the first person we should think of is not ourselves but instead the One Who Loves us Best.

To Pray:

To Do: 

1. Look at what you would see as the ‘honey’ in your life and try to have less of it during Lent.
2. Is there any sin or fault that you have not yet handed over to God?  Do it today.