Joel 2:1-2; Matthew 6:9-13
We fear darkness. We fill our homes with lamps and candles and bright beams outside our doors. We keep our eyes on our screens, brightly animated and full of entertainment.
We fear hunger, our purses stocked with little bags of trail mix and granola, our desk drawers offering chocolates for the mid-morning and mid-day and mid-afternoon slumps, our cupboards full of quick and tasty things that we can reach for in that loathsome hour between work and dinner.
But what is it that we are actually afraid of? We, this people who do not often experience real darkness or real hunger? Are we afraid of the emptiness left behind when the snacks have run out? Of what our hands and our mouths will do without convenient foods to fill them? Is this emptiness the same space that we fill with our lights and our phones and our televisions and our computers in the nighttime? Why do we forget that God so often comes in the darkness and emptiness?
I began to fast on Sundays at the beginning of February so that I could develop an understanding of these urges in myself, so that I could understand myself better and, in so doing, better understand the spaces I fill with food, better understand hunger, and better understand what it means to feast.
I do not yet have answers, but this is a journey I have committed to following throughout the season of Lent. It has been hard and it has also been surprisingly easy to fast. On Saturday evening, I eat dinner. When I wake on Sunday, I drink water. Then coffee or water throughout the morning. I abstain from food until dinner that night, when I sit down with my family for dinner. This meal has become a feast, a breaking of the fast that I welcome with sincere gratitude and awareness for the abundant gift of food. When I feel a pang of hunger throughout the day, I inwardly pray, asking God to guide me in what I need to learn about food and about my calling to food ministry. This prayer becomes constant as the day progresses toward nighttime, my calls to God piling and piling with each breath I take.
I pray this prayer because I do not want to merely be content, lulled into security by my lamps and my screens and my baggies of almonds. I pray this prayer because, through my fast, I want not to be frightened by the threat of darkness and emptiness, but rather to use it to create the space for the next good and holy thing God is calling me to in my life. This prayer is a plea, that God will “give us this day our daily bread” (Mt. 6:11), that I might have all I need to thrive and the space I need to live it fully.
Prayer: Generous God, remember those who hunger and those who live in fear. Help us to ask the questions you need us to ask, that we may be continually reminded that you are present in all the spaces and emptiness we experience each day. Amen.
KELLIE LISI 