Fasting and the Cross

Each year I'm a little frustrated by the fasting part of Lent. The year we as a church gave up complaining and wore wrist bands to remind us of this was my favorite. Every other year has been a mess. In thinking about this I realize that the whole orientation of fasting is toward the mess. When I do fast "successfully," I still experience a loss of control and a intensifying of burden. Some people talk about how swimmingly their fasting goes. Good for them. For me there's a bit of chaos even when I'm fasting from something as simple as food. For example, I'll have five lunch dates for the two weeks I've set up to skip lunch as a fast. I will mean not to, but life seems to be unable to resist interfering in this way with my finest fasting plans. And here I'll further confess that I never have any fine fasting plans. Left to my own inclinations, I would just skip it. It's not for me. This reminds me of the Cross. The Cross is the most inconvenient thing in history. It stinks up every human plan ever made. It interferes with every human aspiration. The Cross is the messiest thing in history too. It cannot be approached reasonably. Everyone who draws near to the Cross and the Christ who died on it is undone. Whatever success or competency one has in life, the Cross obfuscates it. The Cross is frustrating. Because it fatally pokes at the heart of our sinfulness, it will always be frustrating. The blood of it gets on our identity. How the Father saw and rejected the filth of it, when the Holy Spirit reveals this to any one of us, crushes whatever we've tried to do for ourselves religiously. Fasting quickens the frustration. It hurries us along the path of dying with Christ. It is married to prayer. We have a prayer group in our church. When God really begins to move, that prayer group will be renamed and transformed from the inside out into a prayer and fasting group. Fasting ties prayer to the Cross and its power because it forces the issue of our sins and weakness.

In the end, when I don't fast, it's because I don't want God to do much in my life. I'm trying to manage the mess, the same mess the Cross has proven to me is unmanageable. In the end, I am my own frustration. A patient Savior calls to me through His Cross.