Wherefore Have We Fasted and Thou Seest Not?

The COVID-19 pandemic has been both a challenge and a learning opportunity for my family. The situation has tested our faith and patience and yet strengthened our testimony of the priesthood and modern-day revelation; specifically about the home-centered, Church-supported, gospel.

Holding digital family gatherings with distant relatives on the Sabbath, and extending to friends and family our Prophet’s invitations to fast have been particularly fruitful activities. Not only have they been enjoyed by active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they have also landed in the minds and hearts of the less active and non-members as they have had a way to approach the message of the Gospel without the feeling of anxiety that comes with the unfamiliar—or perhaps unwanted—social experience of a Church ward. One way in which we have been able to tell that the message is being received with intent is because it has generated questions.

I now want to address the most common fast-related question I’ve heard over the past two weeks, and I paraphrase: We’ve fasted, where’s the miracle?

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we are constantly taught the basics on fasting. We know to abstain from food and drink, to pray, and to give a generous fast offering. We know that as a Church we fast on the first Sunday of every month, and that we can also fast when we personally feel the need for it. I know all this, and still I easily forget the instructions on fasting that our Heavenly Father gave through the prophet Isaiah, written in Isaiah 58. He starts by addressing His people, who come to Him with a familiar attitude and question:

2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.

3 ¶ Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.

4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.

5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?

Verse 2 is significant because the people are being addressed as a community and not individually. He knows we know what to do during a fast, but as a people—that is, how we relate to each other, how we treat, talk to, tweet, judge, minister to each other, and approach Him—we have forgotten some important things. It’s worth pointing out that, even as a people, each of us is still individually responsible for the use of our agency.

Then, in verse 3, we ask where’s the miracle? and He immediately answers and continues in verse 4. We’re fasting, but as we fast we are doing what pleases the people, and not what pleases our Father. Take a stroll online and it’s obvious that our collective attitude is “for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness”. Even if I don’t share, do I mentally in self-righteousness envision myself as the only one who did right and ended up with an “afflicted soul”? So, how do we do better?

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

In other words, we are called to truly serve one-another, to heal our families and our community. We are invited to give ourselves up for the sake of others, as we have symbolically given up food for the sake of the guidance of the Spirit. Where is the miracle? If we follow Him, we become the agents that bring to pass the miracle. Of course, the experience is not just that we will become more like Him, but in doing so we are promised much more:

8 ¶ Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.

9 Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;

10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday:

11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

Is not for our “health [to] spring forth speedily” exactly what we need? Then let us “take away from [our] midst […] the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity”. Just as we cannot be saved without serving our fellow man, we need to serve our fellow man if we are to ever see the miracles that we hope for when we fast.

Whether we have yet to begin have already concluded our fast, let us constantly remember who we must be and what we must do so that when we call “the Lord shall answer”. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.