Prayer, I think, is like science. You celebrate the discoveries, but you must also spend time investigating the failures.

For the first time, I fasted. It was Biblical fasting, if Biblical fasting included coffee and part of a Diet Pepsi. I felt guilty about the Diet Pepsi so I didn’t finish it. And my fast failed. No revelations. No deeper relationship. No renewed commitment. No spiritual cleansing. No light on my path.

I wanted a Nehemiah moment, where Nehemiah fasts and prays alone in his room and realizes he needs to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. And his story ends with the people of the city standing on the new wall worshiping God, and their praise and joy resounds across the Promised Land.

I won’t be building a wall. Yet.

I fasted for 24 hours during Holy Week. I read that Methodist patriarch John Wesley fasted every week from sundown Thursday through 3 p.m. Friday, and I decided to fast from sundown Thursday through sundown Good Friday.

In retrospect, it was probably the wrong time to launch a fasting experiment. It was Holy Week, so I was already in a spiritual place, with accelerated reading and accelerated prayer. It was during the great coronavirus Isolation of 2020, so my awareness of His presence, and my dependence, was amplified. Our conversations were becoming closer to constant.

And maybe 24 hours wasn’t long enough. I ate a banana shortly before I lifted my sunset prayer on Thursday evening, and didn’t feel hunger speak until mid-afternoon the following day. It growled for a couple of hours and then quieted, and when sundown arrived again I was wondering if I shouldn’t press into another day. I had a takeout fish sandwich within reach, so thoughts of a second day of fasting faded quickly beneath the fragrance of fried food.

And I was alone. In Acts, we find mention of people fasting and praying together before beginning journeys and missions. Maybe I should have partners. I know some men who have fasted together and they promised to alert me to their next attempt. One of them is now training for a Christian mission to the Middle East, and I’ve talked to him about his trip, but I never asked if fasting brought new light onto his path.

Residents of the science community recognize failure as a muddy patch on the road to enlightenment.  You muck through the failure, and some of the mud still clings to your boots when you arrive in Eureka. 

So my boots were muddied after 24 hours, and Eureka is still ahead of me. I believe He has a wall for me to build, but I’m not sure if the Light will reach me through a fast. It could come through a prayer walk, a talk with a friend at church, a prayer or video shared through an email, a song, or in preparation for a Sunday school lesson. The conversation continues.