Commentary
Last year for Lent, I wrote about taking forty-six days to live on raw milk and bone broth. Here we are at Lent again, and I have once more reduced my intake to tea, raw milk including raw yogurt, and bone broth. As I write this, I am seven days in. My husband just finished two weeks of the same fast.
Of course there are health benefits to fasting. Anyone who has studied metabolism knows that when the body is not constantly digesting food, something shifts. Energy that would normally be used for digestion is redirected. Ketones rise. Inflammation can drop. Hormones adjust. Many people report mental sharpness and clarity.
But that is not the clarity I am most interested in.
There is something that happens when you are fasting that feels different from simply eating clean or lowering calories. The world sharpens. You see suffering more clearly. You see joy more clearly. It feels as if you can see through the veil of people’s intentions. The noise fades. Motives become easier to discern. Your own weaknesses are harder to hide from. It is not dramatic. It is subtle, but unmistakable.
I find myself wondering what that is. Is it biological? Is it spiritual? Is it both?
The Bible speaks often about fasting, and almost always in connection with clarity, decision, or encounter. Moses fasted forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai before receiving the Ten Commandments. Elijah fasted forty days before encountering God—not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in what Scripture calls the still small voice. Jesus himself fasted forty days in the wilderness before beginning his public ministry. The early church fasted before making major decisions, before commissioning leaders, before stepping into unknown territory. In Scripture, fasting precedes revelation. It precedes covenant. It precedes calling. It is not presented as punishment. It is preparation.
Lent itself is not explicitly commanded in the Bible. The forty-day observance developed in the early centuries of the church and was widely recognized by the fourth century, mirroring Christ’s forty days in the wilderness. The number forty throughout Scripture signals testing, purification, and transition. Forty days of rain in the flood. Forty years in the desert. Forty days on the mountain. Forty days in the wilderness. Before resurrection, there is often wilderness. Before clarity, there is often hunger.
And before one hundred people ask in the comments whether I am Catholic, I am not. I do not identify with a denomination. I am simply an avid student of the way of Jesus, of Yahweh, and of the patterns woven throughout Scripture. Lent has always seemed like a good time to fast. When I was younger, I gave up coffee or sugar or gluten. It is an annual marker that is easy to remember. It prevents the ego from saying, “We’ll do it next month.” Next month turns into next year. Lent arrives whether you are ready or not, and it invites participation.
There is something powerful about choosing discomfort voluntarily. When you willingly give something up, especially something your body wants, you reorder your desires. You tell your flesh it is not in charge. Whether one frames that in spiritual language or neurological language, the effect is similar. Appetite quiets. Awareness increases.
Some will argue that fasting sharpens the mind because the body is not expending energy on digestion. Others will say ketosis improves focus. There is research on autophagy, on metabolic shifts, on cognitive benefits. I do not dismiss any of that. God designed the body with astonishing intelligence. Biological explanations do not negate spiritual ones.
But Scripture suggests something deeper. Fasting is often paired with prayer and humility. It is not merely caloric restriction; it is orientation. It is turning your face toward God without distraction. It is choosing hunger in order to hear more clearly. When Elijah encountered the still small voice, it was after fasting. When the early church sought direction, it fasted. When Jesus entered the wilderness, he was led there by the Spirit and fasted before stepping into ministry.
Perhaps clarity comes because fasting removes noise. Not just digestive noise, but emotional noise, habitual noise, ego noise. We live in a world of constant consumption. Food, media, opinions, outrage. When you step back from even one form of consumption, something shifts internally. The edges of reality sharpen.
I am only one week into what will likely be forty-seven days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. There will be hard days. There will be moments when warm bread smells like temptation itself. But I look forward to the clarity that seems to unfold slowly over these weeks. Observing the world around me and commenting on it is one of my many jobs. If fasting allows me to see more clearly, to discern more honestly, and to listen more carefully for that still small voice, then the hunger is a small price to pay.
More than clarity, I am hoping for wisdom—wisdom to see how to move forward in the world that comes at us each day. The world is loud. It is reactive. It demands immediate answers and instant opinions. Fasting forces patience. It slows the body, and perhaps in doing so, slows the impulse to react without reflection. If I can emerge from these forty days not just seeing more sharply but responding more wisely, then the discipline will have done its deeper work.
Perhaps it is spiritual. Perhaps it is biological. Perhaps those categories are not as separate as we pretend.
All I know is that when the body quiets, the world becomes clearer. And in a time when so much feels noisy and blurred, clarity—and the wisdom to act on it—feels like a gift worth pursuing.
