The Invisible Bridge Revisited

from The Invisible Bridge

Julie Orringer

The next day he prayed and fasted. During the early service he felt certain he had made a terrible mistake. If he'd waited another week, he thought, she might have come back to him; now he had secured his own unhappiness. He wanted to run from the synagogue to the rue de Sévigné and retrieve the box before anyone found it. But as the fast scoured him from the inside, he began to believe that he'd done the right thing, that he'd done what he had to do to save himself. He pulled his tallis around his shoulders and leaned into the repetition of the eighteen benedictions. The familiar progress of the prayer brought him greater certainty. Nature had it's cycles; there was a time for all things, and all things passed away. (205)

What a beautiful statement of the power of fasting in the spiritual life--incidental to the overall story, but a statement of deep faith nevertheless.  And we see the serenity that comes from taking the time for even a momentary contact with the great I AM.