Encountering God

This past week, through the eyes and heart of Brian McLaren (Finding Our Way Again), we examined the first way that people of faith might interrupt their regularity and normalcy, challenging their faith to greater depths. That way is voluntary pilgrimage. It is an intentional choice to interrupt our normal family lives, and interrupt our normal orientations by seeking new, unknown places God will meet us. Places like Jerusalem, Mecca, Bethlehem, Rome, a retreat center, a youth camp, a conference, or a sabbatical in the mountains or desert southwest, etc. Whatever the voluntary pilgrimage that breaks with our normal patterns of life, it becomes for us a spiritual revival, a new birth, or a rite of literal passage.

A second way that people of faith interrupt regularity and normalcy is through fasting. What is more normal and regular for us than eating three meals a day? What is more habitual and routine than our personal or social customs of coffee and toast, sandwich and soft drink, meat and potatoes, rice and beans? To forgo normal eating - whether through a complete fast or through a partial fast - becomes a kind of dietary pilgrimage, a way of making sure we have not let the rhythms of the everyday put us to sleep, a way to make sure that our habits have not become addictions, that our kitchens have not become prisons. Whatever the reason and whatever the occasion, fasting is an exercise in extraordinary intentionality. Fasting requires self-control and so defies the self-indulgence of gluttony, lust, and greed. Like pilgrimage, it helps us to appreciate precious, mundane things we so easily take for granted - a sandwich, a mug of hot chocolate, our own beds, our front doors or gardens.

Personal Encounter

• Imagine the world in one thousand years, in the thirty-first century, following two scenarios: one in which these first two ancient spiritual practices have been forgotten for a thousand years, and one in which they have been revitalized and followed. What would these two worlds be like?
• Read and examine Isaiah 58 for an even deeper perspective on fasting, and the fruits of extraordinary spiritual intentionality.