Our lives are sacred. Its a truth we don't often experience in the humdrum of breakfast, lunch and supper. Our cupboards are full of groceries and yet we are starved for a sacred dimension of life with God. What can help us to enter our sacred longings such as for the presence of Jesus or to experience God's help in hard situations or to experience the beauty of the purity of Christ or to receive God's comfort in loss? The ancients in the Bible had a way. They brought their entire being into expressions of sacred longing by renouncing eating and drinking for a period of time in a discipline called fasting.

Heroes of the Old and New Testaments fasted for sacred purposes. David fasted to express his grief for the death of his friend and to seek God's healing for his sick son. Ezra fasted to humbly request God's protection from danger. Joel preached that fasting expresses a whole-hearted return to God from sin. The church in Antioch fasted to prayerfully send Paul and Barnabas into ministry and Jesus fasted and assumed that his disciples would fast to express a longing for his presence after he left them.

Do you long for a deeper experience of life with God? Fasting is a discipline that can stoke sacred longings. Your purpose might be to express your longing for God's presence or to request God's help or to express your turning from sin. There is more than one way to do it. Decide on a number of meals to skip and wether you want to include water or juice in your fast or not. Begin with short fasts and grow to longer fasts. Spend the time you would have used for preparing and eating meals by expressing to God the longings of your heart and that your desire for him is greater than your hunger for food.

One last idea is to do a fast for justice. Isaiah preached that God's chosen fast is to feed the hungry. We live in a world in which some have plenty while many go hungry. You can skip meals and empathize with the poor and express to God your concern for justice. You can save the money you would have spent on meals and give it to a responsible organization that gives holistic hope to the hungry.  (P. Baarendse)