Fasting, Desire, Anger and Mastery

 “Why are you angry,” said the LORD to Cain, “and why has your countenance fallen? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.” Genesis 4:6-7 (BSB)

“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.” ~Unknown

"...for man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires." James 1:20 (BSB)

Fasting has been on my mind for weeks. Because of Patrick’s death, I’ve been doing a lot of study around the topic of mourning. And a few weeks ago, something struck me: Scripture shows seemingly opposite patterns when it comes to fasting in seasons of loss.

David fasts and prays while his infant is still alive, but once the child dies, he stops.

Then in the New Testament, John’s disciples ask Jesus why they fast while His disciples do not, and Jesus says there is no reason to fast while He is still with them — but once He departs, then they will fast.

These two moments have been sitting on the “sticky side of my mind,” as an old preacher once said. They keep circling back, pulling me deeper. Today, that trail led me into Isaiah 58 — especially verse 6, about setting the oppressed free. And how that is the kind of fasting God chooses. 

And somewhere in the middle of all that Scripture, I realized how this was applying to me:

I’m angry.

Grief‑stricken.

Actually, I'm both.

I can feel the grief underneath the anger — the disappointment, the let‑down, the unmet expectations. And as I named those things, I remembered the Israelites at the foot of the mountain in Exodus 32. Moses had been gone for forty days, and the people began to feel abandoned. The word translated “delayed” is bosh — to be ashamed, disappointed, confounded.

That word — and their experience — resonated.  I’ve said those exact things to God recently: that I felt abandoned, cursed, unloved. The wait has been long without any change. Things get worse rather than better. And suddenly all the passages I’ve been reading this morning began to resonate with my own experience. It’s been difficult to hold a single train of thought because everything feels connected.

But I’m going to try.

Fasting, desire, disappointment, anger, mastery — and my word from last year: wait.

In studying the Hebrew word mashal (“to master, to govern”), I noticed its first use in Scripture: Genesis 1:16, where the two great lights govern the day and the night. When God tells Cain to “master” sin, He’s calling Cain to do to sin what the sun does to darkness — to govern it, to keep it in its place, to refuse to let it rule.

That took me straight back to Isaiah 58:

“Then your light will break forth like the dawn…

your light will go forth in the darkness,

and your night will be like noonday.”

And this is what spending so much time in Scripture is like, one word brings back something you've read before. This passage sounded a lot like a chunk of Scripture I committed to memory over ten years ago, found in Job 11:

"For you will forget your misery,

recalling it only as waters gone by.

Your life will be brighter than noonday;

its darkness will be like the morning.

You will be secure, because there is hope,

and you will look around and lie down in safety.

You will lie down without fear,

and many will court your favor.

But the eyes of the wicked will fail,

and escape will elude them;

they will hope for their last breath.”

Light mastering darkness.

Day mastering night.

Hope mastering despair.

When I looked up the word teshuqah (“desire”), the study tool described it as trajectory, running‑after, overflow‑toward. That reminded me of Job’s words: “You will forget your misery, recalling it only as waters gone by.” Desire is a flow — and fasting is a deliberate restraint of that flow.

But mastery isn’t a one‑time event. It’s a cycle — a rhythm. Day after day, the greater light rules the day, and the lesser light rules the night. Some nights the moon is full; some nights it’s barely a sliver. Winter stretches the darkness; summer lengthens the light. Life ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes.

And then there was another part of that Scripture that I hadn't committed to memory all those years ago, the part that I bolded and underlined because it too resonates so deeply with this season I'm in:

“The eyes of the wicked will fail,
and escape will elude them;
they will hope for their last breath.”

That is exactly what despair feels like — when I look with my feelings instead of my faith. When my grief governs my sight, my “eye” becomes what Scripture calls ra’ah — the “evil eye,” the unhealthy eye Jesus spoke of in the New Testament passages of Matthew 6 and Luke 11 . Despair and unmet desire sink their teeth in and escape is impossible to find. 

In Hebrew thought, the “evil eye” wasn’t about superstition. It meant a self‑focused, compassion‑less way of seeing — a gaze turned inward, unable to perceive anything but its own pain.

When my feelings take over, when my desires go unmet, when disappointment swells, my eye narrows. I lose compassion. I see only my hurt, my ache, my longing — and the absence of compassion from others. My sight becomes “wicked” in the biblical sense: not morally corrupt but distorted by self‑absorption and sorrow.

And when my eye is unhealthy, everything looks dark.

Which brings me back to mastery — to governing the night, to refusing to let the lesser light define reality, to fasting as a way of clearing the eye so it can see again.

A practice I may begin

I’ve been struggling with anger, dashed hopes, and the disappointment of desires that feel perpetually unmet — especially in the wake of Patrick’s death, and in life more broadly. At times it feels like I have no mastery at all over my emotions.

Recently I was reminded of the Didache, the early church’s discipleship guide, which describes the first Christians fasting regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays. That rhythm and the focus of each day caught my attention.

So, I may try this practice:

Wednesday — Betrayal and rejection

Both perceived and actual.

The place where negative desire begins to form.

The moment when sin crouches at the door.

The beginning of mastery.

Friday — Submission and self‑denial

The death of self.

Our own cross.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith… who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame.”

(Hebrews 12:2)

“Let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles.”

I don’t know exactly what this rhythm will do.

But I know I need a way to restrain the overflow, to govern the darkness, to wait with hope, and to let light break forth again — even if only as a sliver at first.