On Discerning Reader, Trevin Wax recommends a new book by Scot McKnight called, Fasting.

The greatest strength of the book is McKnight’s picture of fasting as a response, never an instrumental practice in which we try to receive something. We go without food because of what has taken place in our hearts.

The book lays out the different ways that fasting serves a response. It can be an expression of repentance, a response to a moment in which we feel we must earnestly seek God, a response to grief (McKnight sees grief as the thread that connects all the various fasting practices). Fasting can sometimes be a response to our need for spiritual discipline, a response to our corporate life together, even a response to poverty and injustice.