It is fair to say that I am a person of extreme appetites. I am either really into something or not at all. For the things that I love anticipation can be as much of a buzz as the experience itself. The restaurant menu with its promise of delicacies I can’t prepare myself, the runway-show edit in a glossy magazine of clothes that won’t be in store for six months, even the 30 second pre-listen offered on iTunes ahead of purchasing that key track can all send me into a heightened sense of excitement. “Oh, I can’t wait!” I will internally scream as I consider just how pleasurable said experience will be.
This year, I decided to do Lent with a mediaeval flavour and go for a full-on Lenten Fast. Okay, so I haven’t opted for the sackcloth, although there has definitely been a dearth of colour in my sartorial choices of late, but the whole no chow-down at all until 6pm has tested me in many ways.
My decision this year stemmed from two reasons; the first was that I wanted to do a fast where I had an attitudinal shift in terms of my expectation from God. The Prophet Isaiah puts it better:
“Why have we fasted, they say, “and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed.” Isaiah 58:3
When we do something that outwardly looks terribly pious, it is so easy to expect JC to give us a Gold Star, perhaps even make us Teacher’s (or should that read Rabbi’s?) pet. At the very least answer our pleas that accompany said fast, or make sure that others be they in the church or outside it are suitably impressed by our spiritual sinew. Whilst I do not wish to diminish outward observances or indeed expectation in supplications, there is a danger that one’s focus can get skewed. When we choose to moan when we don’t quite get the answer we expected or the response from an omnipotent God , we defeat the point of a fast or any outward observances of a believer. It turns our relationship with God into one of expediency - where we’re only in it for what we can guarantee we will get. This year has been tough, as once I took away the expectation that the result of the fast would be either an intense spiritual experience a la my favourite all time mystic Hildegard of Bingen or better yet some BIG prayers answered, I had to find a different focus to understand why I was choosing to have a month and a half of diminished consumption.
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never go thirsty.” John 6:35
The food we eat can only sustain us in a most basic of ways. Fasting has shown me how on a normal day I use food both to punctuate the hours (time for a snack, a cup of tea, another snack) and also assuage feelings (Feeling rubbish? Time for a cheese board, washed down by a decent bottle of red). When you fast, you are left with nowhere to turn. Except to the Lord. Without the distraction of food, you have more time to spend in prayer or contemplation. Lunch hours have become an hour spent in a pretty church in the City rather than in the queue for the latest it-food truck’s offerings. And as for those feelings, the ones we sometimes spend forever and a day running away from, you are forced to bring them to the Lord, feed on His word and seek a satisfaction that goes beyond the body or mind’s concerns and reaches the Spirit.
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