Pondering Feasts & Fasting

Food is just that stuff that we need, a simple matters of calories in and calories out, right? 

The more that I an really getting deeper into the Torah, the more that I am learning the value of food. 

When people killed an animal to eat with you, it had meaning. When YHVH instructs his people to sacrifice and animal and eat foods, it has meaning. I am only just now getting into the understanding of covenants and how important they are. 

What I am seeing is that what passes our lips is important. I was never raised to think that way though, living in a typical quasi-Christian, American home. My parents weren't educated in the Scriptures, and able to teach me what they meant, and so I am seeing so many things with brand new eyes, as an adult. It has been a long, slow journey, but so wonderful. 

This is going to be my household's first year of observing the Feasts of Yahweh, come the spring. We are going to have a Hanukkah celebration, but that isn't the same thing, as it is more of a historical remembrance of a happening, kept by tradition. While we aren't obligated, I think that it will be something nice to share in, as a family (same for Purim). Since we are only just recently learning enough about the Feasts to know HOW to share in them, our first experience will be with Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 

With so much focus these days being put on feasting, I want to make a point to try and learn how to also fast in a way that is pleasing to Father. I have been unthinking in how I eat, and what I eat... and it shows. I am reminded, when I dress for the day, all of the ways that I have been careless. I know that I have lived a less than disciplined life, in many regards. It's just this one area that seems to be on display for anyone to notice. That's not to say that I care out of a sense of vanity, but that there is a feeling of nakedness right now. I feel as though I've had my covering removed, and my head shorn. So, to go hand-in-hand with learning what it means to eat with people, to make covenants, and what meaning that food has between God and his people, I want to learn how to purposefully sacrifice and put food away from myself. I can imagine that learning this exercise will help me to value food more, and also the context in which it is received.