The Mystery of Spiritual Delights: Thoughts on Fasting and the Sabbath

Mysteries in the Bible are intriguing. It makes sense that there would be some.  If the God the Bible teaches us about is as wise, as powerful and as BIG as all of the universe around us would seem to suggest, there are bound to be things about Him we cannot fathom with our relatively tiny little brains. Yet, we long to know things.

I am beginning to suspect that there are some things we can't "know" logically or rationally--things our brains are not designed to discover by thinking. 

Maybe some things we can only "know" by experience, and what we learn by experience is often hard to put into words. These "knowings" are not necessarily irrational.  They don't go against reason. Rather, they seem to go beyond reason, into realms we can begin to imagine, but we can't explain. 

The practices of "fasting" and "keeping the Sabbath" are two of these mysteries. Here I share some thoughts on both, and how they might be related:

Our pastors have been leading us through a series of sermons on spiritual rhythms--disciplines that help us in our quest for a deeper relationship with our Creator.  Last week Pastor Gary taught about fasting as a spiritual discipline. The mystery about fasting is that the Bible talks about it a lot, but there's never an explanation of why or how we should do it.  It's as if we are supposed to know, instinctively, that it's a good thing to do, without being told.

 

And today, as I was reading in Isaiah, I was drawn to what the prophet says about the idea of the Sabbath.  The Sabbath is another mystery that has puzzled me.  Not that it's a strange idea. It actually seems like a really good one.  It makes sense that a rhythm of resting would be a healthy exercise to incorporate into our lives that are normally full of activity.  But I just haven't understood why "remembering the Sabbath to keep it holy" seemed so important to God. Why is Sabbath-keeping one of the Ten Commandments? And what does keeping it "holy" mean?

 

In Isaiah 58, it seems to me that God brings the two mysteries together in an interesting way. Here He is telling His people what is important to Him--what they should be paying attention to and doing in order to enjoy the life He wants them to have.

Isaiah 58:13, 14 says (in The Amplified version):

If you turn away your foot from [traveling unduly on] the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a [spiritual] delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor Him and it, not going your own way or seeking or finding your own pleasure or speaking with your own [idle] words, Then will you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage [promised for you] of Jacob your father; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

 

Turning your foot away, and refraining from certain things for a season, on a regular basis, seem like they might be linked somehow.  Maybe they both have to do with spiritual rhythms. I am going to explore this link for a while.

 

I have to confess that my journal is full of glorious statements about things I intend to do that I never speak about again. I have good intentions but my attention span is very short.  So I am not going to promise God, or myself, or anyone else that I will pursue this idea.  But I have decided to try to connect the activity of fasting with the concept of the Sabbath and see what happens.

 

So, starting tomorrow, I'm going to (try to remember to) set aside every Sunday (for a while at least) to "fast" by doing what these verses explicitly say I should do (or not do) on the Sabbath. That is my equivocal declaration on this day.  You can pray for me if you feel so led.