New Year, New Hopes

Today is the first day of the annual week of prayer and fasting at my church 2nd Mile. Im eating icecream as im writing this, so obviously the concept of "fasting" has been left to flex with our ideas on what will be the most effective for us. Honestly, im not really sure how i feel about this. I am curious to know if there is thought or reason out there that fasting ought to be from food as it is in the Bible. My experience with this is pretty much limited to a '24 hour famine' I did with my church in junior high. We camped out in the church building for 24hrs with no food, but for some reason were allowed unlimited amounts of coffee among other fluids. Not really the smartest idea on the part of the poor adults who agreed to watch us.
The idea of this week is to eliminate something from our life that takes up our time or thought and devote that time to prayer instead. I wasn't sure how effective fasting from food would be, given that I still have to spend the time making meals for my kids and i wonder if I'd start viewing the week as a crash diet instead of a somber devotion to prayer. As Im thinking about it though, perhaps food is the most common form of fasting because hunger is such a strong and constant feeling that it would bring with it the reminder to pray in a strong and constant way. I may still decide to add this to my week.
I was thinking through what things take up a lot of my time that i could be using for prayer. After deciding I probably shouldn't fast from dishes, laundry, cleaning, or my kids - I decided to go with the obvious: facebook. It's kind of depressing to realize this is so much a part of my day throughout the whole day that its going to be quite difficult for me. But at least I know that with the amounts of time i normally click that tab on my computer, I will be reminded to pray constantly through the day instead. The other discipline I'm going to be adding on to my week is to wake up before my children for some time of prayer. Since I can't really give them away for the week, the only way to avoid their distraction is to get my butt out if bed earlier than they do.
These simple tasks seem daunting to me, yet I'm pretty excited for this week. I spent the month of December mentally gearing up for the new year. I love the beginning of a new year. It feels fresh and new. A chance to start the year with a clean slate, full of goals and ideas on how you're going to do things different to make this year really count for something. So far this new year has bombed. Not in a cool slang 'bad means good' kind of way. Its just been a rough month all around. Its really been a rough month for all of Tucson as well. And as the week of prayer and fasting approached, it occurred to me that I was putting my hope in the magical properties of flipping a page in a man made calendar.
I'm so grateful to be a part of a community of people who have made a determined effort each year to spend a week putting aside the trivialities of the world and putting our focus on God - the only true giver of hope.