True Fasting: Isaiah 58:1-5

Fasting often is understood as stopping something. For instance, not eating food for a select period of time. However, this is only half of what we are called to do. The purpose of fasting is to actually do something productive with the time you have from stopping a particular activity.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
   ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
   and you have not noticed?’    “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
   and exploit all your workers.

True fasting is this:

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
   and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

Fasting is more than stopping a particular activity. It is using the free time to seek God, and serve others. When we fast like this, God see's it and honors it. If we simply skip a meal, we are missing the point.