Day 29

Fasting and physical health

I confess, I’m not good when it comes to fasting. The last time I fasted I ended up with my blood sugar so low I had to be given a biscuit to begin to restore me to health.

That experience has coloured my life as a Pastor. I don’t suggest to the church that we should have a day of prayer and fasting. That said, we always try that on Sabbath – for convenience. The Sabbath is actually a day of feasting and celebration rather than a day of mourning.

I therefore greatly appreciated these words,

“The true fasting which should be recommended to all, is abstinence from every stimulating kind of food, and the proper use of wholesome simple food, which God has provided in abundance. Men need to think less about what they shall eat and drink of temporal food, and much more in regard to the food from heaven, that will give tone and vitality to the whole religious experience.”

Medical Ministry p.283

Fasting, in this case, sounds like something I can do and sounds like something I can freely recommend.

Have you spent a little time looking at your diet recently? How about keeping a record of what you eat and what you drink for a week? You could write down what you eat and at the end of the period work out if you have eaten enough green vegetables, focussed too much on fried foods, ate too many canned or processed products when you could have been eating fresh foods.

Then work out, “have I lived to eat or eaten to live”?

Peter