No Meat Fridays

I’m on my lunch break right now and just finished a delicious veggie burger from the company cafeteria (strange combo huh… delicious and company caf?) Anyways, I’m walking back to my desk and one of my co-workers says “Hey, you’re going to need to go to confession after lunch for that burger hahaha!” He obviously thought he was amusing, so I smiled and said, “Good thing it’s a veggie burger!” and kept walking. I was almost back to my desk when he called my name, “Taryne, why do you stick to that whole ‘no meat on Fridays’ thing anyways? Don’t you think God has better things to do than keep track of who eats what?” To be honest, he caught me off guard. No one had really put it that way before. I thought about it for a few seconds before heading over to his desk and explained my thoughts with a smile. I don’t abstain from eating meat because I’m afraid God is “watching” me. I choose to not eat meat on Fridays as a very, very small sacrifice for what Jesus did for me on the Cross. Lent is not a time to keep track of our sacrifices as a way to “please” God, but a time for us to give up small things in our daily lives because we want to show Him how grateful we are. If you are giving up eating meat (or drinking coffee, or going online, etc) for the mere reason that “that’s what God expects,” I ask you to reconsider your motives. We should want to make these sacrifices as a way to thank our Lord , who made the ultimate sacrifice for us.