Friday the 4th of March - Reading from Zechariah (Zech 8:7-17, 19-23)

"They shall be My people, and I will be their God."  As our God makes promises to His people (in this case, to the Jews, but by extension, to the Church), He is faithful to execute His promise.  We are His people.  He is our God.  And it is for that reason that within this current season we yearly strive to bring ourselves closer to living in the manner in which He taught us to live.

"Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor, and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, says the Lord."  Tomorrow, we come together to purge from our corporate and our personal inventories those things which divide.  Are these things which we come to remove not things that begin as "imaginings of evil in our hearts"?  Are they not all things that are "against our neighbor"?  Jesus taught us who our neighbor is, and in so doing showed us that everyone is a neighbor, especially those in need (parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10).

"The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness."  These fasts were to commemorate events in the downfall of the first Jewish commonwealth, including the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. But hear in the words of the prophet how God intends even these events to be for "joy and gladness."  What a remarkable thing!

Earlier within the same prophecy of Zechariah (Chapter 7) God says to the prophet, "Speak to the people of the land and to the priests, saying, 'Though you fasted and mourned in the fifth or seventh months, lo these seventy years, did you at all fast for Me?  And if you eat or drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves?'"  The people indeed fasted, maintaining an outward conformance to their faith, but inwardly their hearts were not set upon God.

This is the warning contained in this prophecy to us, now thousands of years later.  The same words that God uttered to His people the Jews then, the same prophet speaks to us today!  Fast, but do so in love, with the heart set upon God, not harboring anything against another, but focusing only on what separates me personally from my Lord and my God.