Lately I've found I have more content to share than time to do it in on Sunday mornings.
In this case the extra content is from a book.
In his book Celebration of Discipline (which I highly recommend) Richard Foster shares the portion of a journal from Elizabeth O'Connor regarding her experience of fasting. I found her progression helpful and fascinating:
1. I
felt it a great accomplishment to go a whole day without food. Congratulated myself on the fact that I found
it so easy…
2. Began
to see that the above was hardly the goal of fasting. Was helped in this by
beginning to feel hunger…
3. Began
to relate the food fast to other areas of my life where I was more compulsive…I
did not have to have a seat on the bus to be contented, or to be cool in the
summer and warm when it was cold.
4. Reflected
more on Christ’s suffering and the suffering of those who are hungry and have
hungry babies…
5. Six
months after beginning the fast discipline, I began to see why a two-year
period has been suggested. The
experience changes along the way. Hunger
on fast days became acute, and the temptation to eat stronger. For the first time I was using the day to
find God’s will for my life. Began to
think about what it meant to surrender one’s
life.
6. I
now know that prayer and fasting must be intricately bound together. There is no other way, and yet that way is
not yet combined in me.”
When fasting progresses from focusing on myself to focusing on God, we start to get it!
