The Goal: Fast for one day, focusing on standing with the poor with one simple addition: generosity.
How to fast in solidarity with the poor:
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Pick a day to fast that works for you and if possible, pick a day that works for your community.
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Fast until sundown that day. Then, eat a simple meal in gratitude.
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In the time you’d normally be grocery shopping, cooking, eating, or cleaning, give yourself to prayer.
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Calculate the money you would have spent on breakfast and lunch, and share it with the poor.
The way we will be practicing this together:
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A season of regular collective fasting one day each week for 3 months (April, May & June)
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We recommend we do this as a church community every Friday. (As this may not suit everyone an alternative is to fast collectively with your Table group on the day your Table group gathers and then break the fast together with a simple meal that evening.
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Calculate the money you would have spent on breakfast and lunch, and donate it to the 101 Kitchen Refurb Fundraiser. (When you click on the "donate" button you can setup a monthly recurring donation if you want to spread it over 3 months).
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Pray and ask God to infuse your imagination and desire with his imagination and desire. Do whatever comes to the surface of your heart.
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As you fast, give, and serve, quietly ask God to set your heart free of self-love and self-preservation and transform you into a person of Christlike agape.
(Note: Please modify as needed for health reasons, and also consider whether it would be supportive for you to meet with a therapist or doctor as you think about engaging in this practice. As a community, ask how you can support and include those who need to modify this practice.)
Why the Kitchen Refurb Fundraiser?
This is an investment into the long-term ministry and kingdom work of serving the poor from that kitchen, whether it is The Long Table or the various groups using the kitchen each week such as Anaka Women’s Collective.
“Give to the hungry what you deny your own appetite.” —St. Gregory of Nyssa
In the West, many of us struggle with the problem of food abundance — having too much food to eat. Our pantries overflow with snacks; we have so much food in our fridges it goes bad before we have a chance to eat it; apps like DoorDash put any food we want just a few swipes away. Dieting is a constant fad, and most of us live in a daily war of attrition against sugar, processed carbs, and over-indulgence. But most of the world, and many more people than we realise in our own neighbourhoods and cities, live with food scarcity — not having enough to eat. Often, they are hiding in plain sight in our own churches and communities.
Fasting is a way to bridge this gap, between “the haves” and “the have nots.” Going back at least as far as Isaiah 58, it has long been a vehicle for biblical justice, a way for those with too much food to share with those in need of food.
Early on in the history of the church, fasting was tied to what Jesus and the early Christians called “almsgiving” — a practice that combined generosity, serving, and justice. On fasting days, Christians would take the food or the money they would have spent on food and give it to the poor.
Often, they would also give the time they would have spent cooking, eating, and cleaning up to serve the oor. This simple practice of giving away the money we would have spent on ourselves has the potential to transform not only the lives of the poor, but also our own lives and communities.
Information alone does not produce transformation. To grow we need to reflect on what the Spirit is inviting us into and then put this teaching into practice.
Isaiah 58:6-9
"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”