The Dentist Who Closed His Practice on Fridays

Dr. James Chen had fasted every Friday for fifteen years. No food from sundown Thursday to sundown Friday — just water, prayer, and Scripture. He was disciplined, devout, and deeply sincere.

Then one Friday morning, while reading Isaiah 58, a question lodged in his chest like a stone: what good was an empty stomach if his hands stayed idle?

That week, James called the free clinic on Barker Street in southeast Portland. They hadn't had a dentist in seven months. Children were showing up to school with abscesses. Adults were losing teeth they couldn't afford to save.

So James made a decision. Every Friday, he closed his private practice — the one that billed four hundred dollars an hour — and drove his instruments to that cinderblock clinic. He still fasted. But now his fast had hands and feet.