Our Stories
Weigh-In, Weigh Out
By Aaron Soderlund | posted 02/05/2009
"Give us today our daily bread." Matthew 6:11
Some of you may know that every year, I have a Super Bowl party at my house. We call it the "Weigh-In, Weigh-Out Super Bowl Party". This year was the sixth consecutive year that it has taken place. It started out as a fun thought to see how much weight we gain while watching the Super Bowl and all the food we eat during it. It has escalated (go figure) into a day that people prepare in advance to make themselves gain as much weight during the 4-hour game as possible. Essentially you step on a scale right before kickoff. And you step on the scale immediately after the game ends. The person with the biggest difference... wins. There's a trophy and everything. But almost more importantly, there's the title of being Champion for that year.
This past Sunday, as every Super Bowl Sunday for the past six years, food piled into our house. Literally, piled. A constant repetitive cycle of get up, go to the food table, load the plate, sit down, watch the game, repeat. The cycle slows down a little bit in the second and third quarters, but makes a comeback in the fourth as the competition is winding down.
Earlier that morning, I was sitting in the service listening to Keith talk about ‘our daily bread'. About us praying for only that which we need. I don't remember who it was that he was talking about, but he talked about someone that prayed that God would give him not enough that he'd have too much, but not too little that he would be tempted to steal and disgrace God's name. And here I am, sitting in my comfy red plastic chair not eating anything, despite Bill Wolff bringing doughnut holes (Thanks, Bill) because I'm about to shove more food into my stomach that afternoon than many people in our world eat in a week. Something seemed a little off to me. Not ‘off' enough to not do the competition, but where there needed to be a different point to the event.
During the sermon, we were given three questions to think about as we pray for our daily bread and I started coming up with some answers:
- Is my prayer for daily bread being prayed in the context of God's Kingdom? Answer: It hadn't been before, but on Sunday it was and I was excited about it.
- How does wise planning fit into my prayer for daily bread? This is such a difficult question, I didn't have an answer to it in this Super Bowl scenario.
- How can I be God's answer to someone else's prayer for daily bread? Answer: This one, I can do. I was a little surprised that none of us participants had thought of this before. We totaled the weight gained by all of the participants in the "Weigh-In, Weight-Out" competition and will match that total and donate it to a food bank to help give people their daily bread.
So for the first time in our 6-year history of this competition, there was more to it than just the trophy and the title. With our 10 contestants, we gained a total of 56.6 pounds. So this week we are working on getting 56.6 pounds of food to give to HopeLink in the hopes that we can be God's daily bread to someone who is praying for it.
It's not anything radical and I'm surprised that we hadn't thought of it before. It just took an attempt at looking at it from God's view instead of my own. And honestly being the competitive person that I am, I feel better about not winning than any other year, because at least my 7.0 pounds will give someone else 7 pounds of food they need.
To respond to this message, email Aaron at aaron@windermere.com.
