On Feasting While Fasting

Jan 9-18 is the Vineyard Canada national fast where we are invited to fast and pray and seek God. When I was praying about what kind of fast God might be inviting me into during this time, the words “eat at my table” came to me. My thoughts were drawn to the “table set before me in the presence of my enemies” in Psalm 23.

I am a snacker. I endlessly graze between meals. This is especially evident during what I call the "witching hour" — 8-9 pm — often while watching meaningless TV. Seldom is this related to physical hunger. It is usually a manifestation, I think, of a restless soul, searching for the next hit, scanning cupboard and fridge for something to satisfy. I’m not even sure what it is I’m searching for in the moment. I suspect it’s related to comfort or reward — something to quench the unease within or something to celebrate the end of a difficult day.

And I think it is significant that God is inviting me to his table, to the abundant meal he has prepared for me and that that meal is in the presence of my enemies — my tension, my struggles, situations and people that grate and annoy. This is the place, in the midst of unrest and unease, that I find comfort, nutrition, sustenance. This is the place of my reward — the anointing of my head, the filling of my cup.

St. Augustine famously prayed: “… you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.”  God’s table is the place of rest and contentment, of filling. And yet, I spend so much time and energy searching the cupboards for snacks that only temporize my hunger and never satiate.

I also think it is significant that the third person of the Trinity is called “the comforter” and that, in a conversation with Abraham, God referred to himself as Abraham’s “very great reward.”  Hmm… comfort and reward!  While searching in all the wrong places (the “cupboards”), God invites me to his table, the place of true comfort and reward, where “my soul is satisfied as with a rich feast” (ps 63:5), and where his “steadfast love is better than life” (Ps 63:3).

So the invitation during this 10 day fast to “eat at my table” is an invitation to not indulge in snacking — to only eat at meal time, only at the table. When hunger for something else, something other, arises, I am invited by God to turn my thoughts and my hunger toward the next meal, when I join him at the table he has prepared, the only table that truly satisfies.

I am learning the reality that when I fast from something it frees me to feast on God. When I say no to self, I say yes to him. No to snacks, yes to the bountiful table!