Interesting thoughts on fasting

Last night, I read a story about two guys who tried to fast for 40 days (and only made it 20). One of the guys was Christian, one was not. The Christian had some interesting thoughts in his journal entries, so I am going to post bits of them.

On Day 3, he has a business lunch out, and he sits among them drinking tea, but still feels detached from the group.  "I am in the same restaurant, engaged in the same conversations, yet something about the shared experience of a meal brings a level of camaraderie that I feel excluded from.  The whole experience makes me ponder all the biblical references to shared meals.  I don't think that it's a coincidence that the early Church ate together.  There's something almost mystical in the fellowship of breaking bread together.  In Revelation, John even goes so far as to paint a picture of heaven including a seven-year feast.  It's interesting that the same God who encourages the act of communal feasting also admonishes us to fast.  Perhaps it makes us appreciate the feasting all the more, though I still can't say I've figured it out."

On Day 7, when he admits to being ravenously hungry, he writes, "I think there is something bigger to this fast than just denying myself food.  It's becoming apparent just how much of a culture of instant gratification we live in.  Every commercial for food seems to be based on the premise that when we feel the hint of hunger, we must immediate gorge ourselves, not just out of necessity, but because we somehow deserve it.  In light of this, fasting seems practically countercultural.  It refuses to give in to the prevailing sentiment that we are entitled to fulfill our desires the very moment we feel them, and that the experience of eating will fill some kind of deeper spiritual hunger.  After all, food has become more than sustenance in our culture.  It has become another consumer good.  Fasting doesn't seem like such an ancient discipline in that context.  It seems like something Americans desperately need to embrace."

Day 14: "I got sick today at work for absolutely no discernible reason.  First thing in the morning, I came in feeling fine, went to the bathroom and immediately threw up on myself.  Gross, I know.  The strange thing is I felt fine for the rest of the day.  I have to think that it's the process of my body purging itself of all the trans-fats and preservatives I pump into it.

I'm definitely hungry now.  I keep thinking back to the brief time I spent in Africa last year.  There I came face to face with actual hunger.  Maybe part of fasting in modern-day America is to actually have some context, however small, for what real hunger is like.  I've always been one to bandy about meaningless phrases like "Man, I'm starving" when 11:45 rolls around.  In a society of rampant excess, very few of us know anything about starving.  I cannot even claim to know it now, because I still have access to food whenever I feel like ending this fast.  But perhaps fasting can somehow teach me a little bit of empathy for the vast number of people in the world who really do understand hunger."