Fasting tends to pull us out of our normal life routines, patterns, and loops. We eat and drink almost without thinking. Like an airplane on auto pilot, the stomach and mouth robotically receive their desire. No cognition required. Open wide and fill full.
I once saw a video presentation in which the presenter said, “Our patterns become our prisons.” That which once provided beauty, order, structure, and aesthetic value now locks us into rhythms far less productive than our potential demands.
As a worship community we are interrupting the patterns of the body, soul, spirit, and of life in general by fasting and praying through the forty days of the Lenten season.
Sometimes “old habits don’t die.” Everything within us calls for old patterns to thrive. We know we need to eat less, exercise more, spend more time with the family, gather with God’s church more consistently, but the old patterns refuse to breath their last.
Our Lenten ministry includes interrupting our too busy, noisy, entertained, and overloaded lives with prayer, fasting, and times of reflection and meditation. From my perspective, it is best to replace old habits with newer, more productive choices. The pattern loses power because it is replaced with a far more productive and life giving choice.