Fasting is about a single and whole spiritual disposition. Fasting is for only one thing: to manifest our desire for God and the kingdom of God in our whole person. We fast in order to look toward God and find him. We fast to clean our sight to see him: "The eyes is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light."
     So how do our eyes have anything to do with eating our not eating? Very simple-everything we eat is something which our eyes or some other of our senses present to us as an object of desire. We see, we want. We want, we eat. Sight represents all of our desires, both physical and spiritual. Eating represents all of our attempts to fill and satisfy our desires. We even call our desires needs.
     But every one of our desires must be broken down by the desire for God. Only God can provide us with true satisfaction and fulfillment. The tragedy of human life is two sided: either we lack and desire something we do not have; or we acquire what we desire and we find out that it lacks depth or satisfaction.
     God knows what we need. We need love and life and he has given both to us richly, in Christ. Only the cross overcomes the tragedy of our neediness or dissatisfaction. The cross has put the peace of God in the midst of sorrow. The cross has put life in the place of death, in the tomb, where before there was only loss and the blindness of oblivion.
     Fasting is putting the cross, and what seems to be dryness, poverty, suffering, and absence in our lives so that we can look to God by ignoring all the other "sights" in our life: food, drink, anxiety about time and work and clothing. Fasting is not eating richly and it is not thinking about riches. Fasting is taking time away from our satisfaction of desires which lead to nothing by themselves, toward the ultimate beauty and satisfaction of heaven and the light of God. In fasting, we leave aside the temporary goals and satisfactions of this life, so that we might learn more about God and heaven, which are ultimate.
     If we restrain our desires a little bit, we learn to trust God and can desire him enough to overlook anything: our sufferings, our pride, and wrongs done to us. Even if we are unable to desire God properly, we will learn to seek to desire him. We will uncover our troubles, weaknesses and sadness so that we can see that we do need God and desire a heavenly and divine kingdom beyond this world.
     When we fast, through forgetting all the desires and goals which are not ultimate, we can learn to give up pride and hate and grudges and fixations which bind us to the temporary nature of the foolish world we live in. God is ultimate. God will give us everything we need. We do not need to go running after possessions and food and ambition and pride and constant measuring ourselves against others. We can never be truly wealthier than a person who has acquired the presence of God in their heart. None of us are wealthier than the saints, because they live out of the bounty of God's wealth, which is a wealth of love and life. The rich will die and their wealth means nothing to them at death. The famous will die and almost all will be forgotten. "But those who seek the Lord shall lack no good thing" (Psalm34:10). The strong and the proud will die and their strength and pride will be nothing but dust and decay. But God and his life are forever.
     Feast your eyes on God's incarnate Son, who has enriched our hearts with life and love and love which destroys the ultimate disappointment and dissatisfaction of life lived under the "shadow of death". Feed on God. Receive his body and taste his life in the prayers and services and time for meditation in this season. Drink in the wealth of light that comes when we seek his presence with all our hearts.