Fasting and Feasting

Re:Verse passage – Nehemiah 8:9-12 (day four)

I love that throughout Scripture, God commands fasting and feasting in equal measure, often in symmetry to each other. Our God is not one who commands constant mourning or asceticism, nor does he desire for us to live in unending indulgence and leisure. Both fasting and feasting are good and proper ways to respond to God’s word, and we see them both displayed by the heroes of our faith. Depending on the people in question and the way God is moving amongst them, some encounter God’s law and holiness and rightly fall on their face, mourning over their sin. Others, as we see Nehemiah encouraging here, rightly breakout in rejoicing because the Lord of Lords is on their side, and as the writer of Lamentations states, “His mercies are new every morning.” Both are needed – we must mourn over our sin and tremble at God’s holiness, but we must also rejoice that such a holy God pursues us with love and grace. The more we understand Scripture, just as the Jews did in this passage, the more we will feel led to both fast and feast in response to God’s Word.