Pastoral Reflections: On fasting, COVID, and people’s problems

1/13/22

New City Church began 21 days of prayer and fasting on Monday of this week. I’m always encouraged every year to hear the various ways people are fasting. Fasting over longer stretches than a few days (regardless of how one does it) is a good reminder of our need. Our need for God, his provision, and his presence. It’s not normal for most (certainly not all) in an American context to be continually reminded (via hunger) that we are all truly in need of God to provide. Sure, our living situation, income, and various things may not be how we wish them to be, but we typically have enough to keep us going.

COVID also frustratingly continues to be a lingering problem. It will be two years in just a few months. From a pastoral perspective, the disruption from community and all that goes with has been one of the most difficult things for me as a pastor. My job is to help people engage with and follow Jesus. It’s hard to do that in isolation or without regular rhythms or habits that cultivate a lifestyle of obedience to Jesus. As a church, we try to stay connected with people online throughout the week as well through various videos and social media posts, but following Jesus is not merely intellectual, it requires physical community.

COVID understandably negatively impacts this. Perhaps we are getting through the last big and disruptive wave of infection, but of course, we don’t know at this point. Fortunately, our community groups resume next week, and we have continued to see good engagement with those over the past year.

This past Sunday on preached on the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark 6. One of the things we see throughout the Gospels and in this passage is how Jesus always sought to make other people’s problems his own. We typically, often with good intention, like to tell people what to do in order to fix their problems. Jesus, knowing the crowd has been there all day and is hungry, makes their problem his own.

Granted, we are not Jesus. We can not miraculously feed thousands of people. But we can ask ourselves who in our life has a problem that we can be part of the solution to helping. Not with words, but with actions.