Fast! Real Fast!

For those who will be fasting sometime soon, here is a devotional for those doing the 30 Hour Famine (yes, I cheated...this is what I wrote to say to the kids tonight):

Why are we going without food?

Well, the 30 Hour Famine is about saving kids’ lives. By raising money, we help feed those who cannot get food. By fasting ourselves, we get a “taste” of what it is like to be hungry.

There are other reasons we fast, especially at this time of year as we go into the season of Lent. In fact, there are many others fasting along with us across the world during this time, although not necessarily for the 30 Hour Famine. They fast to celebrate Lent.

Did any of you know that Lent has a history in the church as being a time of penance (self-sacrifice)? Some people did this in order to re-enter the church after a period of denying the faith. So, why do we “celebrate” it? The National Presbyterian website says that “Lent/Easter is a journey to Jerusalem where we hear Christ’s commandment (Maundy, as in Maundy Thursday, comes from the Latin word for commandment) of love and service, and encounter the depth of pain and suffering of Christ. We celebrate the rising of Christ along with our own dying and rising from the waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil. Throughout the season of Easter we continue to remember our baptism by encountering the mystery of a life in Christ and breaking bread together.

Wait, I still don’t get it. And I think some of you trailed off too.

Okay, during Lent people traditionally give up things like chewing gum, pop, or bad habits like chewing their nails. As great as those things are, they don’t quite match what the spirit of Lent is after. If we are to encounter the “depth of pain and suffering of Christ”, we need to strive to do more than miss our favorite television show (as painful as that may seem).

That is where fasting can come in. Fasting allows us to connect to God in ways that giving up bad habits doesn’t even touch. When hunger pains get bad (and in 30 hours, they aren’t really that awful), we can ask God to help us. Our suffering is not even a percentage of the torment that Christ experienced when he was tortured and killed for our sins.

Yet, our attempt is what is important here. In striving to understand the suffering of Christ, we see the amazing gifts that we have been given. How simple it is for us to run down to Wendy’s to pickup a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and an order of nuggets or to call and order a pizza that someone else will bring to our front door!

We have so many choices in our society and they are all placed at our fingertips. We often take the ease of our world for granted. I said we, because I know that I do every day. However, it is not enough just to realize that we take things for granted; we must do what we can to help those around us who do not have it so easy. And that is part of why we “do the Famine”. In raising money, we help to provide food for those who do not have any access to nourishment.

Before we get too far along, here are some warnings about how we fast:

Read Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.

The important part there is in verse 16: “When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don’t make a production out of it…If you go into training inwardly, act normal outwardly.”

The point here is that we are concentrating on God. If we are concentrating on God, we won’t be making a show out of it. Throughout the course of our Famine, we’ll be taking time to hear lessons and scripture, praying, and watching videos that will refocus us away from thoughts of our hunger and back to where our hearts and attention should be: God.

Now, to close this lesson, I’m going to ask each of us, youth and leaders alike to take some time to heed the call of Matthew 6:6.

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

Call it prayer, call it meditation. However you want to look at it, take it seriously.