Ezekiel 4:9. "And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt, and put them into a single vessel, and make bread of them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it."

This is part of what Ezekiel was to do during the days God told him to lie on his side facing a model of Jerusalem under siege. He was to bear the punishment of all of Israel by lying on his left side for Israel three hundred ninety days, and on his right side for Judah for forty days, each day representing one year of each kingdom's suffering at the hands of its enemies. He was to do this while facing a model of Jerusalem under siege which he had built, indicating that, while he was bearing their punishment, they would certainly suffer, as well. The whole scene is very unusual and worth reading - Ezekiel 4:1-17.

Two things stand out to me today in this. First, God sometimes asks us to do things that may seem very strange to us, things that take us far outside of our comfort zone. How would I feel if I thought God was telling me to create a model of a city; make little siege engines, camps, and battering rams, and place them so as to enact a siege against the city; lie on my side for four hundred thirty days facing the city; and eat nothing but bread made to His instructions and cooked over cow dung? I think I would have thought I'd gone a bit crazy! And, apart from worry about my own sanity, if I thought I was being asked to do something like this, I would be concerned about what others would think of me! Even if I prayed and discerned and came to the conclusion that God wanted me to do this, there would be part of me that was reluctant to make a fool of myself. But the voice of God is our conscience, and the more we form it and pay attention to it, the more clearly God can speak to us. Ezekiel must have had been very in tune with God to have been able to receive this message so clearly and not think it was just some crazy fancy of his mind. Ezekiel did not give his own sanity or others' opinions a second thought, his only objection to the whole idea was that he didn't want to eat food that would defile him.

So the first lesson for me here is to continue to form my conscience and listen to it. If I feel God is calling me to do something, even if it is something I think of as pointless (or even crazy!), if I am certain it is from God, I must do it, and not worry about what I or others think. God's ways are not my ways, but I know and can trust that He is always working for good. To accomplish great things, He sometimes asks us to really put ourselves out there in ways we do not understand.

The second thing that strikes me today is the idea that we can take on suffering to ease others punishment. I know that Jesus did this on the Cross - that His suffering and death gained us the possibility of salvation, thus saving us from eternal suffering - but there is sometimes a disconnect in applying that understanding to myself. Take fasting, for example. For much of my life I really did not see the point of it. I would fast, reluctantly, on the days the Church told us to fast but, if I thought about it at all, I thought of it as something I did for atonement for my own sins. I did not see it as helping others. But here God is telling Ezekiel that he "will bear the punishment of the house of Israel" by acting out this tableau for over a year. He will not bear all the punishment, clearly Israel and Judah will still suffer immensely, but in some way Ezekiel doing this is alleviating that punishment. Maybe it was that seeing Ezekiel be this committed to God's word would convince some who had stubbornly rejected the prophecies, and were suffering for it, that God really was still with them. Maybe it brought a few of them around, or at least planted seeds of hope where there were none. I really don't know, but if God said it would help, we can trust that it would! Fasting is one of the three pillars of Lent, even Jesus, who never sinned, fasted, and Mary is always telling us to pray and fast. So I can trust that fasting, and anything God asks me to do, is accomplishing things I do not understand, and since I am being asked by God to fast, I must do it! 

Today is the National Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of the Unborn, and one of the suggested acts of reparation is to fast from at least one meal. I will do that today with a greater appreciation that God is using that self-deprivation in ways I cannot understand. He will accomplish good through it, and it may even alleviate the suffering of others.