Fasting and Prayer

In the healing of the lunatic, when his disciples had failed, Jesus showed that the more real the apparent separation from good, the more certain we should be that with God all things are possible.

Some ideas are gotten rid of only through fasting and prayer. But we are not to suppose that the physical act of fasting or the metaphysical act of prayer can move the throne of grace to a kindness which is otherwise withheld. God plays no favorites and the law of the universe cannot reverse its own nature. Fasting and prayer often do bring our thought closer to Reality, not because of the fasting or the prayer, but because they open up greater fields of receptivity in our minds.

If one wishes to embody an ideal and is willing to give up all else to attain it, then is he fasting and praying. He is sublimating an old idea with a new and better one. If he is willing to abstain from the old and cling to the new, then he is giving greater reality to the new and in this way contacting the law from a more affirmative angle.

A steadfast determination to attain some purpose, the

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letting go of all that opposes it, a complete reliance upon the Law of Good and an unqualified trust in Spirit, this is the true fasting and real prayer.

The scientist, in profound thought and meditation, before his problem, deserting all to solve it, is praying a true prayer to the principle of his science. The poet, waiting in the silence of his own soul for inspiration, is praying that he may invoke the spirit of poetry to his listening ear. The sculptor, chiselling at his marble, withholding food from his mouth, contemplating on the beauty to be brought forth from naught, prays to his god of art, and the farmer, kneeling beside his cabbage patch, trusts in the natural Law of Good to bring his seed to harvest.

We live in a fasting and praying world but often do not read the signs aright. We are too used to the outward sign to realize its inward significance.

The world is much better than it knows or feels itself to be.