A Different Kind of Fast

As a runner, I have two different speeds:  slow and slower.  I love to run, but I was not particularly blessed with the gift of a gazelle, the ability to move swiftly.  I love watching the elite runners who dash along without seemingly breaking a sweat.  God-given DNA is part of their swiftness, but I have yet to see or read about a world-class runner who does not also train hard and fulltime for those events, urgent and deliberate.  “However fast you are running, run faster,” yells Joe Newton, the old coach in the classic running movie The Long Green Line.  Being fast takes effort. 

But the Bible refers to a different kind of fast that takes effort on our part, one of which most people like to avoid.  Most Christians see fasting as going hungry for a period of time to somehow signal God’s attention.  It is a giving up of something good, a type of sacrifice that somehow makes them more holy and gets God to act.   I feel awkward even writing those words.  Getting God to act?  The LORD God, Creator of all, who set the universe in motion with a word?  THAT God?  Not what He had in mind at all.

Early on Saturday morning, a friend called with a dilemma.  She had heard Eric Metaxes last week in a Breakpoint commentary challenge Americans to a 40-day pre-election fast, not for particular candidates, but for the direction of our country.  My friend asked me, “How can I fast, what can I fast, that will be more meaningful than giving up something mundane like chocolate?”

I was astonished.  Moments before her call, I had just finished reading Isaiah 58.6:

      Is not this the fast that I choose:

      to loose the bonds of wickedness,

      to undo the thongs of the yoke,

      to let the oppressed go free,

      and to break every yoke?

It is a fast of righteousness and justice, a time not of turning within but in reaching outward, a sacrifice of doing what is good and right even when you are standing alone in it, going out of your way to be kind to a stranger or a neighbor, providing for others on your path particularly when undeserved, not grumbling or complaining, deliberately loving someone who is invisible or irritating, giving sacrificially, healing strained relationships, swallowing your pride in pursuing peace and reconciliation, seeking out need in all its forms and doing something about it. 

It is not a giving up something, but a time of giving of yourself.  It is not a time of saying “no,” but a time of saying “yes.”  It is about time we DID something with the sole purpose of pleasing God, not to gain His favor, but to pray earnestly and humble ourselves before Him.  It is far too easy to point fingers at others for what is happening in our world.  It is something again to lay before Him our own repentance.  God knows that when our hearts are right with Him, we can’t help but do.  That is what this kind of fast is all about. 

Being fast takes effort.  Be that kind of fast -- urgent and deliberate. 

Would you join me?  I would love to hear how God leads you in this.