I woke up convinced I had somehow found some oyster crackers in my sleep and devoured them. I was slightly panicked because, well, that would be the end of my fast and I had this feeling I would need to start over. Also... what? No deep communications from the Lord while I was sleeping? No dreams? No visions? Or could it be that God wants me to eat oyster crackers? I doubt it.
Today Nurse Shasta walked up to me and grabbed the skin on the back of my hand and then let it go, watching my skin like an old woman reading tea leaves. When I asked her what she was doing she told me that you can tell if someone is dehydrated by how quickly their skin bounces back when you pinch it/. I thought that was funny, and I went to tell Krista about it. She laughed and said she already knew, and that she and Nurse Shasta used to do this to each other all the time in college. Nurse Shasta has no memory of this.
I also realized today that I had somehow completely forgotten about adding some sort of spiritual thing into my fast. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe soon.
It's going to be interesting to see if you "added" a spiritual thing to your fast. I think the fast itself may have been spiritual enough.
ReplyDeleteOyster crackers = communion / Lord's supper crackers. Therefore your dream is about Jesus being the food you need.
ReplyDeletei'm with you matt, i'm hoping to see an increased spiritual element as these posts continue. fasting in itself has no intrinsic spirituality, people fast all the time for lame reasons (weight loss) or none at all. even fasting as a believer can be in vain if no purposeful seeking of God is present in it. i think the true 'spiritual' element in fasting comes through an increased time and fervor in reading and meditating on God's Word and praying through that. Considering it is His only and completed revelation to us, seeking for for vague visions or voices and whatnot will probably be fruitless, or worse.
ReplyDelete@onebighappy What I mostly mean is that if I keep just doing regular life in the midst of fasting, then it doesn't seem particularly spiritual. As Mark W will mention below. Not that good things aren't happening spiritually, but I'd like to be more focused.
ReplyDelete@andy McCullough Where are you when I need you? You are a genius. We missed you at stl this week!
@Mark W That's true, fasting in and of itself is not necessarily spiritual or there would be plenty of people in impoverished nations experiencing amazing things spiritually against their will. I will say that the lack of spiritual things at this point in my fast wasn't because of a lack of purposeful seeking of God. I was, after all, fasting because of direction from God. But I did find from day to day that it was a struggle to stay focused, which is a pretty common experience among people who have done 40 day fasts, at least from what others have said to me.
And, I'll just mention (not intending to start a fight) that I don't think "God's Word" and "the Bible" are synonymous in scripture. And I think scripture is pretty clear that it's not God's only revelation to us (though it trumps other revelations).
Thanks for the comments, everybody!