Thoughts on the Third World Fast

Earlier this week I spent three days eating only rice and lentils for every meal, with no snacks in between. The purpose of this Third World Fast was to help me identify with people around the world who largely survive on just rice or beans for survival. I also hoped to gain a deeper appreciation for how blessed I am to be surrounded by such an abundance of food on a daily basis.

I have to say that this was harder for me than not eating anything at all. Usually when I fast from food I drink lots of water and maybe juice to keep my energy up. In this case I was able to eat but only at mealtimes and when I did eat it was only a single serving of very bland rice or lentils.

One thing I realized was how much I eat for the sheer pleasure of eating. I love the flavors, the textures, the aromas, and the variety of foods I enjoy on a regular basis. Rather than eating for sustenance, I eat mainly to enjoy the experience. This Third World Fast took all of that pleasure away.

I found myself getting very hungry right before it was time to eat again. My mouth would begin to water for food, but not for the taste of it, only for the experience of having my stomach filled so that I would not feel hunger again until the next meal time.

One brother who wrote to me this week to share his Third World Fast experience agreed:

“I must say I have fasted before eating no food, but I think this was even more difficult. By dinner last night I was ready to skip eating altogether rather than facing the rice and beans again! I am not and never will be a fan of rice anyhow so that made it doubly challenging. As I forced myself to eat last night I was thinking about the blessings of variety in America and how even though we are going through economic hard times, many of us have yet to know true suffering and sacrifice.

Also the fast has made for some intriguing and engaging conversation with my soon to be 7-year-old daughter. She did not participate in the fast, but she sure was curious about what her mother and father were doing. I was very proud that she got past the "yucky beans" to really understand what was going on.

Thank you very much for sharing this experience with my family. Tonight as I eat whatever I want, I will be all the more thankful to my Father for providing me with a truly amazing bounty.”

After breaking my fast I found myself feeling more thankful for my food, and not just food but everything else in my life. My prayers lately are filled with thanksgiving to God for my wife, my sons, my job, my church family, my house, my cars, my friends, and more. I am so blessed.

The Friday before I started my Third World Fast our company fed our entire marketing department breakfast. We were served eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, pancakes, fruit, and coffee. Of course, there was so much food that many had seconds or thirds, and afterwards they still had food left over which ended up being tossed into the garbage.

That same day I emailed my friend Vilbert who lives in India to share all of this with him and he surprised me by explaining that he had never heard of, nor tasted, waffles, pancakes, sausage or bacon. He confirmed that his family eats rice for every meal, with curried vegetables and maybe twice a month they would eat chicken, although most could only eat chicken once per month. This reminded me of how my friend Robert Higgins, who died last year from bone cancer, had told me he had never tasted lobster in his life. All of these realizations jolt me into an awareness of my own extravagance. I am so rich. I am so blessed.

So, with all of this in mind I spent three days eating only rice and lentils and praying for God to change my heart and open my eyes.

This 3 day fast was very hard for me, I must admit. I've become so used to having access to such an endless variety of foods and snacks and candy that to eat only rice became a struggle, but one that I’m glad I endured in order to understand more viscerally how people around the world survive each day.

I am so blessed, and if you are reading this in America, chances are that you are too. Food is not so much an issue for you and I. We can find it easily. Even the homeless and those living in poverty in America can usually find free or low-cost sources for food without much trouble. But for most of our planet this is not the case. Most people eat once a day if they’re lucky, and when they do it’s usually rice or beans.

I’m not sure when I’ll do this experiment again, but I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to share in the sufferings of so many around the world. Of course, I have the privilege of choosing to eat this way whenever I like. Most people do not have this luxury.

If your'e interested in learning more about what people eat around the world, take a look at this fascinating slideshow comparison of what different families eat on a weekly basis in different nations.
HERE


-kg

P.S. – If you did this 3 day, Third World Fast with me I’d love to share your story with everyone here, too. Either write your experiences in the comments below or send me a direct email to let me know what God taught you through all of this.

BREATHING LESSONS

As a child I used to suffer from asthma. I can remember wheezing and struggling to breathe as my parents coerced me to swallow the two bitter pills that would help to open my bronchial tubes and allow my lungs to process oxygen again.

The thing about asthma is that it keeps you from doing things that everyone else takes for granted, like running, riding your bike, playing tag, and a lot of other physical games with other kids.

At this age I was very aware of the fact that I had inherited my asthma from my own grandmother. Hers was much worse and required her to burn some sort of incense in an ashtray and inhale the fumes to clear her lungs. To this day I can instantly recall that smell whenever I remember being in my grandmother's house.

Eventually I outgrew my asthma, but I’ve never forgotten this phase of my life. Often, it serves as a metaphor to me when I consider the sustaining power of prayer in my life.

In the New Testament we are commanded to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess 5:17), and breathing is often equated with prayer in the spiritual disciplines for this very reason. Our spiritual communication and connection with God should be a constant and never ceasing activity – just like breathing. We exhale our confession of weakness and we inhale the empowering Spirit of Grace.

This act of breathing prayer is life for us. Without breath none of us could survive very long. Prayer becomes our life line to the source of our life - Christ Himself. Breath also becomes an essential activity for anyone who runs a race, or hopes to compete in a marathon.

I point this out because Paul and the author of Hebrews often speak of the Christian life in terms of running a race.

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” (1 Corinthians 9:24)

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1)

Without great, deep, constant lungfuls of oxygen, we are unable to compete in this daily marathon of faith. Prayer is the key for us if we hope to reach the finish line.

Lately I've been thinking of this because I've started to realize that my asthma is starting to kick up again. Not the physical asthma (I've outgrown that), but the spiritual asthma has begun to slow me down. Thankfully the cure is not a bitter pill or any noxious smoke. It's simply bending the knee and taking the time to listen to that still, small voice again. Time to sit quietly in the darkened silence - and breathe.

-kg

What If Jesus Could Be You For 24 Hours?

Maybe I’ve been reading too many books by Dallas Willard lately, I’m not sure. But, the other night I had a very strange dream that Jesus and I made a date to allow him to live my life for one day.

Dallas Willard always expresses discipleship to Jesus as “Living your life as he would live it if he were you.” So, maybe I was meditating on this too much the night before. Whatever it was, here’s what happened in my dream.

After getting dressed in my clothes, Jesus adjusted my best tie in the bathroom mirror and picked up my briefcase.

“I’ll be home in time for dinner,” he said. “Enjoy your day off.”

“Sure,” I said.

Jesus jingled my car keys in his hand as he strolled down the sidewalk and got into my car.

Does he know how to drive a stick? I wondered. But, he started the car and drove it out of the driveway with no problem.

As I stood there in my pajamas looking at the car disappear into the distance, I wondered what he’d do at my work in my place. What sorts of trouble might I be in tomorrow?

When Jesus got home it was late. My car wasn’t in the driveway. “I took the bus home,” he said.

As he sat down to tell me about his day as me I notice that my wristwatch was missing from his arm. I was afraid to ask him what had happened to it.

First Jesus explained about why he hadn’t brought my car back. “There was this homeless woman at the stoplight near your work,” he said. “She has two small children and her husband left her two years ago.”

I finally got the nerve to ask him what happened to my car and he responded matter of factly, “You didn’t give me any money, so I gave her your car. You should have seen the look of joy in her eyes.”

I remembered avoiding eye-contact with that woman the last few weeks. I wasn’t even interested in rolling down my window to drop a few dollars into the bucket she was holding. Now she was out driving around in my car. What would I tell my insurance agent?

Then Jesus went on to explain how, once he got to my cubicle at work, he began to hammer out those monotonous spreadsheets that were due on Friday instead of checking email and surfing the web for the first 35 minutes of the day. “I got done about ten minutes before the coffee break,” he beamed.

At break time, instead of slipping outside to eat a Snickers or smoke a cigarette, Jesus walked down the row to visit Charlie, the quiet guy at work that nobody ever talks to. At first I wasn’t sure who Charlie was, but as he began to describe the guy I start to remember him. He was a weird guy I’d never bothered to talk with before.

“I told him not to be discouraged. He’s been considering a divorce, but I reminded him of those early days when he and his wife first fell in love. I think he might be willing to try and love her more, in spite of the way she treats him sometimes. We prayed together before I left,” he said.

The rest of the day, Jesus tells me, he flew through my workload, returned all my old email messages, and got twice as much accomplished as I ever had.

“I really wanted to do a good job,” he explained, “So your boss would know how thankful you are to have a job. I think he was beginning to doubt how dependable and hard-working you were. Character is such as lost art these days,” he said. I nodded along as he spoke and tried to sit up straight in my chair.

“On the bus ride home,” Jesus said, “I met an old woman whose Grandson had just been diagnosed with HIV. At first she went on about his filthy lifestyle and how he got what he deserved.”

Jesus stopped suddenly and I thought he was about to cry.

I asked him, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s a terrible thing,” he said.

“What is?”

He looked up at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “To get what you deserve.”

After drying his eyes, Jesus continued with his story. “I reminded her of those early days when her Grandson was a small boy, and then I asked her to share her fondest memories of him as a toddler.”

“He’s going to die soon,” Jesus said. “I wanted her to give him the grace he needs before it’s too late.”

After a few moments Jesus composed himself and stood to go. I offered him some dinner but he shook his head and said, “No thanks,” he said. “I’m fasting.”

Before he left, Jesus looked into my eyes with a smile. “You’ve had quite a day with me in your shoes,” he said. “We should do this again sometime.”

Then Jesus handed me a small box. “I made this gift for you,” he said.

When he left, I opened it. It was a small bracelet that said, “What Will You Do?”

Then I woke up.

by Keith Giles
*Taken from the book, "Nobody Follows Jesus (So Why Should You?)". Available as a FREE, PDF download at www.KeithGiles.com

THE MANY CYBER REALITIES OF KEITH GILES

Besides my main blog at www.KeithGiles.com I've also set up several other blogs and websites to provide free online resources on a variety of topics.

For example:

PovertyInTheOC.com
This website includes statistics on poverty in Orange County, California where I live and also links to various articles on "How To Start a Ministry to the Poor in Your Community" as well as links to other non-profits and organizations that serve the poor.

OCHouseChurch.com
This website links to a handful of other house churches in the Orange County area and also includes links to articles on house church, links to other voices and blogs in the house church/simple church/organic church community and provides info on how to find a house church, or start one of your own, in the Orange County area.

MissionHouseChurch.com
This is the offical blog website for our house church which we've been hosting now for over 3 years. It includes links to our vision and values and a Flckr page with photos and other fun stuff.

Subversive Underground
From December of 2005 (roughly) to March of this year I published a free, weekly e-newsletter called [Subversive Underground]. The archives are still up at this link and you can read articles on spiritual formation, the early church, discipleship, God's heart for the poor, Christianity in culture and more.

NutInTheShell
This blog is where I post my sci-fi, comicbook and "less spiritual" thoughts. It also contains links to my previous life as a comicbook industry journalist, and my brief attempts at writing my own sci-fi graphic novels.

PlasticAnimalStudios.com
This is a museum site showcasing all my great sci-fi story concepts and sample pages on a handful of projects I had going long before I shut it all down and started this blog.

ParabolicJournal.com
This was a grand social experiment I conducted after being inspired by the 1000 Journals project. We even got a link from those guys to our travelling journal (and hosted another journal's pages) which gave us a lot of exposure.

The concept was to sign people up to receive the journal by mail. They would have a few weeks to add pages and scan them for posting online and then I would tell them who to mail the journal to next. It was great fun and my plan was to subversively communicate Kingdom truth to people in an "under the radar" fashion.

There are some really amazing pages on here but be careful around Journal #7 when you get to the pages of Dutch Smiles. They're not very work-safe...but they're quite thought-provoking, I think.

I have no idea where most of these actual journals are now but I do have the first one and the "Random" journal is in my friend Lito's hands (who was also our web-monkey).

Non-Con
Back in March of 2008 I put together a one-day event called the "Non Conference" with Jackie Pullinger and David Ruis. It was a small gathering of just 100 people. We shared meals, enjoyed simple worship times, and engaged in dialog (rather than monologue) with one another. It was better than I could've imagined thanks to God showing up in a big, big way.

You can download MP3's of our sessions here or on the Non-Con site and there are a few testimonials on the site too.

Will I ever do another one? Only if God really, really wants me to.


**
As you can see I often get ideas and create websites to provide information and resources for people on subjects I am passionate about.

Other than here I mainly hang out online at Facebook and Twitter.

Hope to see you in cyberspace.

Peace,
kg

RE-POST: DO YOU FEEL YOURSELF SHRINKING?

"And John replied, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.'" John 3:30 (NIV)

Do you feel yourself shrinking? Do you feel Christ becoming more and more "at large" in your life? I don't. If anything, I feel the opposite. Most of my day is filled with the pursuit of my wants and concerns about my needs, thinking about my plans, and praying about my dreams.

Jesus? Oh, He's there. But He's not taking over. More and more I'm starting to realize that I really want Him to take over. I need Him to take over.

What I need is for Christ to permeate my life. I need to sense his presence all the time. I need to hear his voice. I need to know his heart for people. I need to take His words to heart and start living them out in my actual life.

When you reach this point in your life, you begin to realize the simple power and wisdom of the Spiritual Disciplines. Suddenly the idea of fasting and observing silence and simplicity become things that your very soul craves.

To many of us, the idea of Spiritual Discipline sounds like a means to take away our freedom in Christ. A way to drag us down and force us to observe the Law. That's not what the Disciplines are all about.

Sure, some churches and more than a few leaders, have misused the Disciplines in the past. Sometimes we can allow others to place their expectations of perfection upon us and bind us up in the pursuit of an outward appearance of Holiness.

But, when a follower of Christ reaches the place where they realize that their flesh is much too weak, even when their spirit is most willing, the Disciplines become an escape route from the bondage of sinfulness.

The Spiritual Disciplines are like turning the spoon away from your own mouth and using it to dig a tunnel under the fence of sin and into the sunlight of freedom.

Jesus' parable of the Pearl Of Great Price (Matthew 13:44), where those who find a great treasure joyfully run out and sell everything in order to get it, is a great picture of what our attitude should be. We're not to worry about how much the pearl costs, we should be worried that we might not be able to sell things fast enough to get the money to buy that pearl.

When we truly understand just how utterly fantastic God's Kingdom really is, as compared to our own kingdom, then the idea of giving up time and food and money and worldly success is nowhere near as precious.

Jesus has some pretty strong words for those who call themselves by His name in Luke chapter 14, verse 27. He says "..Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

Taking up my cross means my own death. It means the end of my personal kingdom and the beginning of His.

My prayer is that God would give me the strength to daily deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him. I want to go where He's going. I want to walk with Him.

What will it cost me? My car? My house? My dreams? My job? Great. What else? I want to kick my kingdom to the ground and dance while it burns.

I'm ready to follow Him now. "He must increase, I must decrease."

Do you feel yourself shrinking?

By Keith Giles