TEN YEARS GONE: Do Not Hide From Your Own Kin (Revised)

 

A Different Kind of Fasting

First published Tuesday, February 9, 2016. Revised Thursday, July 2, 2026.

Is not this the fast that I choose... not to hide yourself from your own kin?

— Isaiah 58

There is a phrase tucked away in Isaiah that has fascinated me for years. 

"Do not hide yourself from your own kin."

It is such an unexpected command.

When we think about spiritual disciplines, we usually think of prayer, worship, generosity, Scripture, or fasting. Isaiah certainly speaks about those things. But in the middle of that conversation comes this remarkably practical instruction.

Don't hide from your family.

I've often wondered why this seems so difficult for us.

People avoid family reunions because they assume they won't know anyone. They dismiss genealogy because they're "not interested in dead people." They drift away from cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and grandparents until whole branches of a family become strangers to one another.

Yet the Scriptures consistently treat family as something worth preserving and repairing whenever possible.

That does not mean every relationship is safe or healthy. There are circumstances that require distance and boundaries, and wisdom sometimes means acknowledging painful realities. Isaiah is not asking us to ignore those complexities.

But I do think he is challenging our tendency to disappear from one another's lives simply because it is easier.

Over the past ten years, this verse has taken on an entirely different meaning for me.

I've discovered cousins I never knew. I've spent hours listening to family stories, tracing old photographs, and piecing together lives that otherwise might have been forgotten. I've realized that genealogy is about far more than names on a chart. It is about recovering relationships. It is about remembering that we belong to one another.

Friends are precious, but friendships sometimes come and go. Careers end. Neighborhoods change. Even marriages can dissolve.

Family is different.

Not because every family functions well, but because every family shares a story.

The DNA in our bodies is only part of that story. We also inherit memories, traditions, struggles, strengths, and the unfinished work of those who came before us. We are connected not only by biology, but by a shared history that none of us could have written alone.

Perhaps that is why Isaiah places this command alongside fasting.

Real fasting is not simply giving something up.

Sometimes it is giving ourselves back.

Maybe one of the most meaningful fasts we could undertake is to stop hiding from our own kin. To make the phone call. To attend the reunion. To learn the stories. To visit the elderly relative. To encourage the struggling cousin. To become the person who quietly reconnects what time has allowed to drift apart.

That kind of fast may nourish more than our own souls.

It may nourish an entire family.