The Fast (Part I)

6 a.m. Day 4 of a five day fast.  I'm on no sleep.  My heart is pounding, my stomach a frenzy of cartwheels.  Perhaps a shot of bicarb will settle it?  For a few minutes it does but then, a wave of nausea hits.  "I'm out," I call to Lisa, "I can't do another day".  We resolve to push on until just after midday, a day and a half short of the target.

Fasting is not a target.  Nor is it a stunt.  It's a journey, a vigil.   It's an invitation to come further up and further in. When Jesus embarked on his epic 40-day fast he was, according to Matthew's Gospel, led into the desert by the Holy Spirit.  Led, not pushed.  During that time he faced three tests all of which would prove decisive in the success of his ministry.  But what did I learn in the blur of those 4 days?

Tuesday 14th - 2am

Since turning 40, the prospect of growing old has haunted me.  It comes and goes.  Lately, it mostly just comes.  At this early hour, I am awoken by the terror, the hopelessness of impending old age.  Regrets plague me, exaggerated by the sleep.  "I'm nearly 50.  I'm neither a spectacular success nor a miserable failure.  What could I have done differently?  Will I have anything to show for it when I die?  Will anyone notice when I'm gone?  If only I had the last 20 years back again".

I try to read a bit but am too distracted.  I turn out the light. Half asleep, an impression quietly begins to form:  "this fast is, amongst other things, about uprooting that fear once and for all.  You are not finished.  In fact, you are about to start living".

The thought gives way to a picture.  Perhaps it's because I've been reading a Michener epic but I'm suddenly enthralled by the sweep of history.  The vision is of God sitting outside of time but leaning sovereignly, attentively and tenderly over the timeline of his creation.  He is immeasurably bigger than any and all of us together, bigger than history, bigger than creation itself, bigger than thought or ingenuity.  Reason buckles beneath the arithmetic.  "Where were you when...?" - God assails me with questions stopping short, as he did with Job, of crushing me.

In a motion that is simultaneously decisive yet perpetual, He sweeps his seamless royal robe over it all.  His eye is especially focussed on his followers - all stitches in his garment.  I am but one stitch.  I sense Him saying:  "You have this life - it's no more or less important than any other I have created redeemed and taken.  But it's every bit as precious.  Every bit as destined.  Every bit as wired to have more of me.  How deep will you go?  How much will you give?  How closely will you listen?"

I sleep.

My security is, as Piper once wrote, "not based on my grip on Him but on His grip on me".  Yet it is His grip on me that produces my pursuit of him.