The Chosen Fast Frees, Feeds, Shelters, and Repairs

Loose the bonds, share the bread, repair the street

The chosen fast is concrete: undo thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke. Share bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor home, cover the naked, do not hide from your own flesh. Then light breaks, healing springs, righteousness leads, glory is rear guard. If you remove the pointing finger and the wicked speech, if you offer yourself to the hungry, you will be like a watered garden, a spring. You will rebuild ancient ruins and be called repairer of the breach, restorer of streets to live in.

Worship becomes neighborhood. Light and healing are attached to loosed bonds, not to a private glow. The pointing finger is named because contempt can coexist with charity. This is not partisan weaponry and not a claim of justice that ignores people harmed by our institutions.

Streets to live in is the test. A warranted life is to treat fasting as solidarity, to stop the finger that explains the poor away, and to measure spirituality by whether yokes actually open and ruins become inhabitable.