On Feasting & Fasting

// the home

This month, we’ve become the newest residents of an apartment complex across the street from the town mosque. We’re a ferry ride and an hour drive from our host and the rest of the squad, so whenever we meet with our host, they come over to our humble abode.

So, we swing the doors wide open to our little apartment. Where we pray over our food in the living room because we can’t all fit in the kitchen, the hot water often turns off when someone showers, there’s a squatty potty (lol), and where one person is always sleeping on the couch and another on the floor (but I won’t say whom).

It surely isn’t perfect, but we were never going for perfection. We were never seeking to impress in our lil apartment. In fact, this is the longest we’ve ever stayed in a single space, so we’re all unpacked and the drawers are stuffed and I taped photos above my bed, just like home.

Here’s the thing: we want this apartment so filled with laughter and memories and JOY that we overlook what it may lack. It doesn’t matter how small, undone or odd it is; it only matters how much love, character and soul it contains.

It’s imperfect and a little messy sometimes (ok, most times), but it’s a declared *safe zone*: a place to come feel seen, heard, known and loved. It’s imperfect so you don’t have to be perfect, either. Just come fully present, wholly HERE in a way that embraces the imperfect & authentic and leaves striving at the door.

And because it’s a rare delight on the Race to be the host, these are sacred moments. The goodness of the world unfolds in this sweet living room and the Father’s presence is felt in every breath.

// the table

So, our friends come over to our little apartment. It’s up close and in the mess. Real time and unvarnished. But time is slower in here. There’s space between the cold wind outside and chaos of life. There’s space to breathe and laugh and BE. Space fiercely protected by and covered in love.

We talk for hours. About what it’s like to be Kurdish and fighting for a state, or to be imprisoned for treason during the Turkish military coup, to flee from Greece, or to be persecuted as a Muslim. We also talk about our families, pastimes, recipes and dreams. It’s like we’ve known each other forever in this lil living room.

// the feast

We have bread & cheese and tea & coffee on unending platters. We have truth telling and empathy, joy and intimacy and everything else for no other fact than we love these people. And they’re gathered around our table. And we want them to feel loved. Deeply loved.

So, we all crowd around our table, munching on bread from the bakery down the street and cheese from our favorite farmers market extraordinaire.

Food exposes our need, our fragility, our humanity. So, we use food as a way to meet people’s needs, to draw us all together, and to shower them in love.

And then we break bread together. But get this: we BREAK bread; there’s brokenness IN the blessing. When we break the loaf, we grip a little tighter, just like Jesus holding onto us with grace in His heart and strength in His hands, guiding us through a season of brokenness. He blessed it, broke it, and gave it.

So, with bread in hand, we give it away, feeding our friends and neighbors and favorite shop owners. We know they had 12 baskets of bread left over after Jesus fed the 5,000, so we aren’t afraid of running out any time soon (John 6:12-13). Nothing gets wasted, so we just keep feeding people.

I’m crazy grateful all this mismatched furniture and these loud friends and platters of food get to house these crazy cool freedom fighters. So, come on over and take your shoes off at the door. We don’t discriminate, Jesus offered food to everyone.

// the fast

We can’t talk about the feast without also talking about the fast. I never really fasted until the Race, besides a half-attempted Lent.

But now I’ve found fasting to be the truest and simplest, yet most radical idea of all: total surrender. Fasting is the ridding process where I empty my hands. I make myself needy and dependent and desperate so I can receive and see the power and glory of Love filling the space. I untether from the fear of scarcity, and I sacrifice with the upmost humility to allow for Love to be amplified. He must become greater; I must become less (John 3:30).

Fasting can mean all sorts of things – but as we change the exterior, we give God permission to change the interior.

We peel back the layers. We remove the distraction. We grow increasingly deaf to the noise of the world. We remove the crutches we are so prone to lean on. We exhaust all our resources until we recognize, deep down in our souls, that He is NOT a last resort. We empty ourselves because we WANT to be filled with His light.

I declare by my words and actions that I am driven by the Spirit, not ruled by my appetite, my wants, or my own consumption. Apart from Him, I do nothing. Apart from Him, I am nothing.

So, I make space in my body and my spirit for the Spirit to move. I thank the Father that He didn’t give me food today, and that HE is my food. I thank the Father that I sit at His table in splendor, I feast on His love.

Honestly, fasting has made me hyper aware and sensitive to the Spirit. I’ve simplified my life and found an amplified God. I’ve emptied my hands so I can receive. I’ve emptied (& am emptying) myself of myself and am a new creation in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17).

He will sustain us in the fast. When God becomes all you have, He becomes all you need. Don’t believe it? Honor Him with the magnitude of your requests and watch Him sustain you. Ask for things commensurate with His ability. Pray the kind of prayers that when He does answer them, you have to stand back and give the only plausible explanation: God did this.

So, fasting brings us to a place where only faith can sustain us. We come to the end of ourselves, realizing that we have nothing left to defend or protect, nothing that is truly ours. Fasting allows us a glimpse of how really and truly helpless we are without Him. So, we fix our eyes on Him and never lose sight of Him, not even for a moment. With Him, we lack nothing. 

I can feast at His table in splendor, knowing that He is my daily bread.

The feast sustains the fast.

Join me in prayer: Lord, thank you for letting my heart expand every time our home crowds and our people gather. Thank you that church isn’t just a building with four walls, but church is here: in this living room and around this table. Church is the universal body of belonging, of community that reaches for love & peace & togetherness. Lord, you are the only possessor of our hearts and we come to you with holy reverence for sustaining us. Thank you that your feast sustains the fast.