Wait a minute

Weren’t we talking about Bible study…how did we suddenly end up talking about food and portion sizes? Because anyone who has read 1 Peter 2 or Matthew 4 or Ezekiel 3 or Psalm 19 knows that the Lord has connected physical food-eating with spiritual Word-imbibing. Now you may not have a menu plan designed for the next forty, fifty or sixty years of your life (yes, I will try that new spaghetti recipe on January 27, 2076), but I’m confident you are planning to eat every day until eating is no longer an option.

Can you envision all God knows about the mysteries of his Word? All the nuances and connections that are second nature to His understanding? All the back story and history that could flesh out and expand every event He did include in His Word? All the intentions and desires He has for His Word to impact this great big world and each little individual person? All the promises He has tucked into passages, waiting for those who need them to discover them for themselves?  If He were us, sitting at the dinner table, bursting with all that knowledge of how good the meal would be for us, He would load our plates and then add more for good measure. His enthusiasm for getting us to eat all the good food we could would give us too much for what we could hold. Of course, He is not like us.

We are the ones who think a big spoonful of meat and a mound of potatoes would be good for oneish Bertrand, because WE are hungry for dinner ourselves and can hardly wait to dig in.

We are the ones who DESPISE peas, so peas have never been grown in our garden or purchased fresh, frozen, canned, or dried and brought into our house.

We are the ones with a secret stash of chips or chocolate for when we need to indulge our craving.

We are the ones who gear eating around our schedule, not our schedule around our eating.

Thinking about food: how we guide our little ones into its wonders, how we order our days to prepare it, how sophisticated or simple our tastes are, how concerned we are with nutrition or convenience or cost or sustainability or freshness, all these real food inputs have counterparts in the menu designs and preparation we make for our spiritual meals as well. Are you addicted to spiritual fast food? On a starvation diet? A picky-eater? Use spiritual food to control your Authority? Enjoy planning well-balanced meals? Make time to “cook” or just grab something as you run out the door? How stocked is your pantry? Think about your kitchen life as a counterpart to your spiritual life and neither will stay the same.