Burning toast and knowing what really matters

I burn the toast. Deep down, I know why. I don't eat toast and watching bread brown is not a very exciting way to pass the time. However, my children love it: "Golden brown toast please mummy" (meaning “ not your "sooty black" specialty .") My children love toast. I love my children. Presented with two hungry children, nothing else matters but getting them fed.

I can be inclined to think of temptations as earth-shattering choices between good and evil. This may be so but it may also be that temptation comes more often in the ordinary day-to-day decisions I have to make between two good things - making toast for my children or doing some cleaning, making toast or improving my mind with a good book, making toast and . . . .

Golden brown toast is not one of Jesus' priorities in today's gospel. However there may be a link - knowing what really matters . Struggling with Satan in the desert, Jesus knew what mattered most - living God's dream for him. Jesus loved God and experienced himself to be loved by God. He knew what mattered because he knew who mattered. God mattered.

Sounds simple? However, knowing what matters relies on a deepening relationship with God and relationships need time. Jesus didn't spend forty days in the desert whittling wood. He was coming to know God and to know himself as God's beloved son.

We, too, are created for loving relationship with God. Ideally, everything else - knowing what matters, choosing who matters - needs to flow from this: so that we might fulfill God's dream for us.

How can we trust the dream? How can we trust that we matter to God? Each new day with my children feels like a gift. Scraping cornflakes off the floor may dull my excitement at the gift but I still have some insight into how God regards me. God wants to spend time with me, to share my life with me, to share God's dream with me.

Take a bit of a risk this Lent. Trust that the God who matters is not the God of the tick sheet or the spiritual obstacle race you might have been introduced to as a child. Trust that this is the God who cares about you. Trust that you matter to God.