A group of sisters at the Ushirika wa Neema, Lutheran Sisters’ Convent, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania stand with folded their hands while greeting. Photo: LWF/Albin Hillert
Reels on fasting go viral on social media. Open your phone and you’ll see it everywhere: intermittent fasting schedules, water fasts, glow-up reels, before-and-after photos framed as discipline and expertise. We have become deeply health-conscious, carefully tracking what we eat, when we eat, and how fasting can optimize our bodies. Fasting is trending today and none of this is bad. Caring for the body matters. But in contrast, I would like to interrupt the trend with an uncomfortable question that the prophet Isaiah dares to ask: Is this the kind of fast I have chosen? As we journey through Lent again this year, let us approach it as a season into discipline, and an invitation to fast and pray. For the majority of people who observe Lent, fasting is an integral part of the season.
In Isaiah 58, God is not impressed by hunger alone. The people are fasting, abstaining, performing religious discipline, yet God says their fast is echoing. Why? Because their bodies are disciplined but their hearts remain unchanged. They deny themselves food, yet continue to ignore injustice, exploit workers, and turn away from the poor. Isaiah reframes fasting not as a private achievement, but as a public act of love. For Isaiah, fasting makes room for love.
Isaiah pushes fasting beyond the body and into relationships. “Is not this the fast that I choose,” God asks, “to loose the bonds of injustice, ... to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?” (Isa 58: 6, 7) In other words, fasting that pleases God creates space not for self-focus, but for others. It empties us not so we can feel strong, but so we can notice who is weak.
In a culture obsessed with control and self-improvement, Isaiah 58 is radical. It suggests that the true measure of a fast is not weight loss or clarity gained, but the compassion that is released. Does our fasting make us gentler? More attentive? More willing to interrupt our comfort for someone else’s dignity? Is our fasting a fasting that breaks the chains of injustice? Our fasting should not just be empty stomachs, but open hands, the fast that feeds others.
While fasting trends online, the world around us is fractured and weary. Wars continue to uproot families, turning cities into ruins and children into refugees, and hunger stalks millions in a world capable of abundance. Women and girls bear a disproportionate weight of this suffering: displaced without protection, denied education, trafficked, silenced or forced to carry the burdens of violence, poverty, and providing care without support. At the same time, even in places marked by prosperity and influence, deep cracks are showing polarized communities, hardened conversations, fear replacing trust, and many people quietly struggling under economic pressure and uncertainty.
It is in such a world that Lent confronts the church with an uncomfortable question: can we fast faithfully while remaining silent, distracted, or comfortable? Isaiah 58 refuses a spirituality that looks inward while suffering multiplies outward. It challenges us to fast not only from food, but from indifference. It invites us to let prayer unsettle us, to let fasting sharpen our moral vision, and to let assistance to people in need become courageous solidarity. In a world aching for justice and peace, the fast God desires is one that dares to heal divisions, lift burdens, and make room at the table for those too often forgotten.
This Lent, may we dare to promise a fast that opens our eyes and our hands, one concrete choice to stand with the hungry, the wounded, and the forgotten. Let our discipline become love in action.
