benefits of fasting—as long as (to repeat a point) we don’t think it is the fasting that brings the benefit. All good gifts come from God; we lay ourselves before God and sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t. But the prayer of a righteous person is heard, James informs us (5:16)—and sometimes the righteous find that fasting is the only way to express themselves. So, in what follows we discover that the person who yields herself or himself completely to God sometimes discovers space