The Day After the Fast Before

And so as quickly as it began it has ended. The Daniel Fast, a fast that I thought would defeat me with all of its dietary restrictions, is officially over. And here’s the weird thing - I already miss it. Not in a mediaeval self-flagellating way, but in what it has managed to do to the interior of me way. 

The fast was combined with a modified Divine Office (no, that’s not a place where pay rises are given on a daily, that’s the set hours monks pray, but we reduced ours from the traditional seven), where me and the other three I was doing the fast with would pray, whether we were at work, on public transport or tucked up in bed.  For me the corporate aspect of the fast was very 1^st Century Church, where unity was front and centre of the Christo walk. And even when disagreements came, they didn’t dominate the main objective of us all which was to draw nearer to God.

So would I recommend this fast to people? Absolutely. In these past three weeks, spending more time in devotion, less time wondering what I am going to eat or snack on, more time dwelling on and being thankful of the  random blessings I take for granted , no time at all strung out on caffeine or hung over from the night before has been a divine revelation. It has made me more in touch with my soul, that eternal part of us all, that we sometimes neglect when we preoccupy ourselves with the things of the world. To get to this point, of feeling that this is a pleasure and a privilege rather than a chore of gargantuan proportions,  one’s perspective and approach must change as Jesus puts it below:

“When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” Matthew 6:16

A lot of the people who have asked me about the fast have questioned whether it was a wish-fulfilment exercise. A case of doing something super-out there to catch God’s attention, or perhaps it was the last roll of the dice of the spiritually desperate.  A sort of plea bargain from the believer which goes along the lines of: ‘Lord I will do this and then in return you will do that’. This impression of fasting has certainly been coloured by ‘name it to claim it’ philosophies in some new churches in recent years. But if we look at fasting in the biblical perspective; it is always done in preparation for something greater.  Daniel fasted and then his visions became super-sized,  Jesus fasted and then his ministry began; we fast and – well that’s the exciting part, we might not know what exactly comes next but we do know we are better prepared for it. As I have said in previous posts, God is not loving the spiritual swots more than others, however, if we want to grow stronger in our spirit, it might be wise to swot up.