"What are you giving up for Lent?" is a very popular question this time of year.
I've never liked that question, honestly, because it focuses on a negative. It's passive rather than active. I'd much rather the question be -
"What are you wrestling with for Lent?"
Now we're talking! Who doesn't like a good wrestling match? It's energetic and colorful. My Great-Grandmother Petry, a very pious woman who looked down on things like card-playing and dancing, loved to watch wrestling. "Watch" is a misnomer, really. She yelled and screamed as if she were there in the crowd. Wrestling has no passive participants or spectators.
And there is good Biblical precedent for this. Jacob wrestles with God (or an angel, depending on how you read it) in Genesis 32. He is struggling inwardly at that time with his deceit and his identity. This becomes an outward struggle when encounters this holy presence.
Fasting should be an active and holy struggle. I encourage you to pick a fast that will challenge you.
Here are some possibilities for fasts that I have heard people doing. Note that not all of them are about giving up something. Some of them are about taking on a discipline.
- Give up or limit watching television.
- Give up eating meat.
- Give up sleeping on a bed. - Two of our youngsters in our church have done this recently as a discipline in solidarity with children who don't have such comforts.
- Read a chapter (or more) of scripture daily.
- Give up computer or video games. - I did this one Lent. It nearly killed me.
- Eat at least one piece of fresh fruit a day.
- Fast one meal a week and give money to charity instead.
- Walk a mile a day.
- Give up caffeine. - This was always my family fast when I was growing up.
- Give up eating out.
- Limit how much gasoline you use in a week.
- Limit your internet time to an hour a day.
I'd encourage you to consider a fast that would be challenging to you. Obviously fasts are not one size fits all. While giving up computer games may have been difficult for me, for people who never play them it would not be a burden at all. Likewise, I almost never watch television in the first place so giving it up would be nothing for me.
I'd be interested in hearing about your own challenges in fasting, past or present, and your suggestions for fasts. Please comment!