50 Hours, no food…
50 hours of no food. And yes, as crazy as it sounds it was totally my choice.
Every meal where my teammates would head into the kitchen to devour plate after plate of rice, chicken, chili sauce, spring rolls and other fine foods, I sat in my room. It wasn’t easy. I soon found myself imagining the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and I tasted the best calzones from the pizza places back home slowly rotate on my taste buds during a team prayer meeting. That in itself is a torture when I haven’t had a good pizza in 4 months, but when you haven’t eaten all day it’s almost physically painful. And that was only 24hrs in.
So why did I do it you ask? What big revelation did G-d give me at the end of it? Honestly… if you would have asked me in the moments before I broke my fast what I learned or when I finally ate and felt normal again I wouldn’t have anything to say. G-d didn’t speak to me in fast. He didn’t teach me during my prayer time when I normally would have been eating, or the final moments in the Word before I devoured some juice and fruit to finally break my fast at midnight. I didn’t hear of some amazing change in any of my friends hearts as a result of my prayer.
From everything I could see… there was nothing to see. Nothing happened.
But that was just it.
Looking back seeing what G-d has been doing in me, it is just that.
It wasn’t about what G-d was doing through me. It wasn’t about how my prayers, my fasting, my seeking out the Lods will had changed something outside of me. It changed something in me. He had taught me endurance.
G-d reminded me that things he does are things beyond myself. Beyond my wishes, desires hopes and dreams. I wanted to see G-d work through me to do something outside of me G-d wanted to work through my prayer to do something in me.
It was a friendly reminder that G-d is bigger then myself. That He sees the bigger picture. That He works for His will in everything through everything for everything, not simply the things I am in prayer about.
