Fasting is a discipline God’s people have taken up for millennia but is not so popular in our current day. I’ve been an Anglican clergyman for a decade now, and fasting has been something I’ve been slow to practice. Maybe it’s my inner perfectionist? Or maybe I really love food?

Sure, in Lent it’s easy to fast from Social Media (don’t we all need this fast more often??), or alcohol, or TV or something. And those are great things to abstain from. But when we fast from food, things get a little more real. Hunger pains, getting hangry (that delicious combo of hungry and angry), growing impatient, and more and more easily perturbed: these all seem to be results on fast days for me.

And it’s at this point of chaos in my belly and felt chaos around me where the opportunity lies. What do I do? Most often not what I ought, and what I ought to do is pray. When I feel the pain, the frustration, the sense of overwhelming lack of control, pray. This is why we fast. We deny our body in order to connect more deeply with our living God. We say no to something good in order to say yes to something far greater, God Himself. When we pray in this way, God grants us spiritual authority. Remember, Jesus told his disciples that certain demons only come out “through fasting and prayer."

This dynamic is at play in our life as those who are baptized. We talked Sunday about being baptized means we step into the chaos of the world and that we lean into the chaos inside us. This coming Sunday we’ll see how being baptized, leaning into the chaos within and without makes us open to the Spirit, ready to pray.

See you Sunday!

Jay+