Holy Guacamole: A Glorious Discovery of Your Undeniable WorthSample

One year during Lent, I nonchalantly decided to fast from online shopping. I regretted this decision a hundred times a day for forty days. This slow Lenten death taught me that online shopping had become my modus operandi for dealing with my life. 

Forgive me, Father, for being a lover of virtual shopping carts.

Jesus plainly told us once that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He probably wasn’t really thinking about my shopping life when He said that two thousand years ago, but during my online shopping fast, it felt like He was using those words to provoke me. The load of my fast was not light, nor was it easy. I’m not trying to compare my suffering to Jesus’, but the truth is this no-internet-shopping thing slowly wore me down until I required an hour alone in prayer, two coffees, and a pep talk in the bathroom mirror just to get in my car and go to the sporting goods store for new cleats for my son. 

I suppose that is as it should be. Lent should stretch you out as thin as you can get to help you remember that this one small area of sacrifice is a forty-day-long experiment in suffering. But why do we Christians put ourselves in a test tube of spiritual discipline like this? I suppose it’s because the weight of life cannot be quantified. We are rarely fully prepared to carry it. We need to practice carrying heavy things, and spiritual disciplines are good for practice.

My fast taught me that owning things is not our fundamental purpose in life. And yet we live as if our possessions define us. We say things like, “I always get the new phone when it releases. It’s my thing. It’s kind of who I am,” or “I saw that shirt, and I had to have it—it was so ‘me,’” or “This apartment doesn’t really communicate who I am.” Of course an inanimate object doesn’t communicate who we are. We are spiritual beings who will live for eternity, who were so beloved by God that He sent His Son to die so we could live with Him forever. No one phone/shirt/apartment can adequately proclaim the brilliance of our existence. 

We are Holy Guacamole. Holy Guacamole isn’t an off-the-rack purchase. God didn’t snag us on a Black Friday deal that included free shipping. We were expensive, and God never wants us to believe that some pretty thing increases our belovedness or significance. Stuff is just stuff, after all, while we are spiritual treasure hidden in human bodies. We’re the lost coins He sought through blood and tears. We’re the lamb He journeyed long and hard to bring back to the flock; the prodigal children God watched for with great anticipation; the ones He ran to welcome home so He could plan the greatest party in history. 

We are more precious and valuable than we can ever imagine.