Lent II | To fast from Worry
“Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy.
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts.
Listen and come to me; listen, and you will live.
”
AN INVITATION TO FAST FROM WORRY…
“How can I rest if I have to pay the bills?” Tricia Hersey poses this “desperate and valid” question in her book, Rest is Resistance. For those of us plagued by a sense of scarcity, perpetual anxiety for the future keeps us exhausted. We feel a lack of funds, of time, of love, of control, of hope. The torrent of fearful thoughts rise up in our minds and fire our efforts to secure our own wellbeing and the security of the ones we love, our neighbors, our world.
Walter Bruegemann reminds us that the practice of Sabbath emerged from the Exodus story, where the Israelites were freed from the relentless labor and productivity of the pharaoh system. God acted to liberate his people from enslavement, yes, but also from the anxiety that deprivation brings. God called for the discipline of rest.
… AND EMBRACE TRUST IN GOD’S ABUNDANCE
“What if what is central to God’s reality is not the mechanistic, utilitarian survival of the species, but the exuberant abundance of Creation and New Creation?” asks artist-theologican Makoto Fujimura.
In the face our culture’s demand for accomplishing and achieving and possessing, the God who celebrates abundance has already granted us the good gift of simply being. The practice of sabbath freedom must come now, even in the midst of the world’s anxious messages of scarcity. For as Thomas Merton writes, “Here is the unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.”
Rest and restoration may come in small ways: closing one’s eyes to daydream for ten minutes or catnapping in the middle of the day. To love freely, to give of one’s time generously, to practice compassion without bounds. We are called to do this for ourselves and for others – out of God’s unlimited surplus.
This second week of Lent, might we fast from worry over scarcity and fear for the future – in order to trust in God’s abundance lavished upon us? Let us listen to our true hunger for contentment in this present moment and cultivate hope in the fullness of life in Christ.
Carry this blessing into the coming week:
Holy Spirit of generous abundance, remind us that there is always more than enough:
enough food, enough love, enough time, enough resources.
Help us to see how our patterns of living in separation and disconnection amplify our scarcity.
Bring us into the joy and challenge of community where bread divided multiplies,
where laughter shared overflows.
Empower us to share freely from our own abundance with others in need.
Slow us down to see how time expands when we breathe and pay attention.
Bless us in our efforts to trust in God’s goodness:
the Love that pulses through the world, sustaining it moment by moment.
Give us the courage to speak out when resources are distributed unfairly,
so we may remind others that there is more to share.
Encourage us to release that which we no longer need to hold onto so tightly.
Inspire us to live in a way that witnesses to our trust in the lavish fullness of life in Christ.
This reflection is adapted from A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent, Christine Valters Paintner.