On Fasting

Perhaps more than anything else, to this world we are consumers.  Everywhere we turn, companies are trying to sell things to us.  If you visit a website or do an internet search for anything, you will see ads popping up for that very product on the next web page you visit.  It’s eerie!  But it must work.  The internet is essentially built on advertising.  And to it and the companies connected to it, we aren’t humans.  We are consumers.  Our identity is tied to what we consume: food, media, clothes, gadgets, and anything else that is marketed to us.  Our primary function in the eyes of the world is purchasing things. 

But not in the eyes of God.  To him, we are not, first of all, consumers.  We are his children.  Rather than being purchasers, we are the ones who were purchased by Jesus for God.  In this ad-driven world, it’s easy to forget that.  To help us remember, this week we invite you to choose something that you normally consume and take a break from it.  We call this fasting.  When we go without something, when we stop consuming something, even for a short time, we remind ourselves that our worth and identity isn’t in what we consume, but in who we belong to.  For some ideas on how you can practice fasting this week, click here to see our Lent practice guide.