I haven't written anything in ever so long. I know that there is a lot that longs to be expressed through these fingers. It is so easy to let the habit and discipline of writing lapse. I intend to rectify that.
I happen to be composing this at the same time that I am about to embark on a 21-day fast. Myself, and all my peeps at my church are fasting together for the next three weeks, beginning this Monday.
Fasting is one of the most common spiritual disciplines in the Bible. Jesus taught in The Sermon on the Mount. He said, "WHEN you fast," not "IF you fast." Jesus assumed that his hearers (and Kingdom subjects) would be acquainted with fasting food. It's a discipline that I've participated in for my whole Christian life. Fasting can also encompass a multitude of habits, appetites and choices that we intentionally suspend for a season to shift our focus elsewhere.
I think that there is, however, another side of the coin, if you will, on fasting, or on spiritual disciplines as a whole. Usually disciplines are referenced to things we decide to do without. But the other side of the coin is that disciplines offer us something to do instead. Instead of eating, we can be engaging in something else. Instead of not watching television, or viewing Facebook, we can direct our attention to something else; something that will add to our spirit and our soul, like reading, or by actually feasting on silence.
Someone put it this way for me: There is a divine "yes" to the "no" you're living out in whatever discipline you're engaging in. In fasting food, you're saying 'no' to physically eating food. But you're simultaneously saying 'yes' to something, like reading, or meditating, or whatever it is that positively inputs something into your soul.
Having said that, I'm saying 'no' to a wide variety of foods for my fast. And one of my 'yesses' will be writing. I'm going to make it my aim to let words, thoughts, ideas and notions to escape my fingertips and put them upon a readable surface.
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