Sackcloth and Ashes
Day nine of a month for prayer and fasting and calling out to God
The following is an extract from ‘31 Days of Prayer’, a book I wrote initially as a personal study, sensing during the Covid pandemic in 2020 that repentance was called for. Each Monday in June 2025 I will be publishing an extract related to fasting mainly to allow myself a day off from writing each week (I often write these posts a day or more in advance)
Day 12: Sackcloth and Ashes
"…if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes."
Luke 10:13
Sometimes confession of sin just isn't enough. We know it deep in our hearts. We've gone too far, done too much, for too long.
Jesus called out two towns in the passage the above verse is taken from, Chorazin and Bethsaida. Having revealed himself as the son of God, demonstrating his power through miracles, the people of these towns still did not repent. Contrast this with the experience of Jonah who was told to prophesy destruction on the city of Nineveh:
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming, "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown." The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah 3:3-5
We're not told in Jonah the entirety of why Nineveh was to be overthrown, other than for wickedness and violence, but the people knew, and their response was to fast and stop wearing fine clothes and instead wear sackcloth.
I've never worn sackcloth, but I understand it to be coarse, scratchy, and uncomfortable. It would not have been pleasant to wear, but a constant reminder of the threat of destruction. Wearing scratchy clothing, their stomachs growling for lack of food, these people demonstrated they had heard the message God had sent, they turned from their wickedness and God relented and spared them.
I do not have a message of God for the UK, but I look and listen and wonder how far we are as a country from God. Writing this in the middle of a pandemic that mirrors a biblical plague. What was our response as a country? Oh yes, we clapped for the NHS…
Do we need to repent as a country? Do you need to repent, do I…?
Repentance is a turning away from sin and towards God. It can help us to show our repentance through giving up or accepting a form of suffering. Of course, Jesus said that we should not tell or reveal when we fast, but he was talking about acts of righteousness, not acts of repentance.
I've experimented with fasting while writing this. I've had some failures… I've found that I can fast from breakfast and lunch, one day a week, without it impacting on my work. I probably overdid things when I attempted to give up sugar, and food and drink containing sugar, completely for 31 days. My wife told me a few days later that the reason I felt like I was having an emotional breakdown was because my body was still trying to adjust after the cold turkey way I'd stopped consuming sugar. After a couple of weeks the highs and lows I was experiencing settled down and then it was just a daily reminder that I'd chosen to avoid sugar.
The singer Johnny Cash chose to wear black for much of his life and his song: The Man in Black makes the claim this was to bring to his mind the poor, the oppressed, prisoners and those who've never heard the words of Jesus.
I've not read anywhere of a call to repentance also including instructions about how people should debase themselves. It seems that we know instinctively there are things we should do, or give up, or change as a sign to ourselves, and sometimes to others, and always to God, that we've understood, we've listened, that we are taking repentance seriously.
Our father in heaven, where we need to repent as individuals, as a country, help us to humble ourselves and repent. To turn from wickedness, whatever its form, and turn to you. Where it will be helpful to us to mark our repentance, guide us and lead us. Keep us from making vows that we cannot keep, from changing things that will hurt us or others. But as Jesus suffered for us, may we not be afraid to embrace discomfort and hunger to show our repentance. Amen.
Read yesterday’s post: https://goal31.substack.com/p/the-gates-of-hell
Day ten: https://goal31.substack.com/p/his-heart-his-harvest
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