I wrote another entry for Orange, this time on fasting: https://www.orangemethodist.org/lenten-devotionals/mar6 I do not think it is my best work, but I am pleased to report that a fellow parishioner let me know she was inspired to try her first fast in response! Praise God for working through even the roughest of writings to call us to good works.
This one has a bizarre back story - I had meant to sign up for something, and just hadn't gotten around to it. Wednesday morning and MB mentioned that no one had written fasting, and that it would be due the next day; I don't think she expected me to take it, but I am glad I did. I spent a lot of time in college fasting - not always well, but disciplined - and since then have, let's generously say, appreciated it more rarely. Reflecting on it, with my days of legalism behind me, reminded me what a blessing it is to fall into God's provision with our most basic need. Because I am taking one of those terrible medicines mentioned in the entry I am no longer able to fast for a week or even three days, but a well-timed day is at least possible, and I am pleased to be refreshed in it now.
I do regret that I won't be able to fast Easter this year. I ended up striking it from the article, but I recalled from Eusebius that there had been a very real controversy in the early church about whether believers were required to fast for one or three days at Easter. Looking it up again, I see that it was not just one or three days, but also there were advocates for 40 hours - the time of Christ's entombment in parallel to the wanderings of Israel and Jesus' fast in the desert (the concept of Lent would not show up until centuries later). Of course 40 hours is not three days and three nights, and maybe the entombment was actually 64 hours if Friday was a holy day, and and and ... really I see I'm already devolving into legalism and strict interpretation again. I look back at our forebears and am amazed at their faith; despite Christ never changing Christianity has grown into a wonderful understanding of God through the most recent couple millennia of the work of the Spirit and of diligent study and prayer of the saints, but there is something special about that simple faith of our fathers that is incredibly powerful too. I assume my children will say the same about me, and I hope that their understanding of God exceeds ours in ways we cannot yet imagine!