Time for a Diet!

My children tend to be pretty sloppy eaters, despite much coaching at each meal.  "Mary, stop dissecting your sandwich and just eat it!"  "Colette, if you pick up your spaghetti with your hands one more time, you will be all done eating!"  Sometimes only seconds have passed since saying grace, and someone has peanut butter in their eyebrows. You get the picture.  However, feed them something sweet and suddenly there is not a morsel left behind.  Upon investigation, one could surmise a meal of spaghetti and green beans had been consumed, but there would be no evidences of cookie.  Colette will literally lick a dessert plate clean if not under watchful eye.

Undoubtedly, their sweet tooth is a recognizable trait of their mother's.  Having grown up in a family of seven, sweets were treasured and evenly divvied to avoid fighting.  My sister, Melonie, and I still lament the day M&M's did away with the tan M&M as we would receive 2 of each color at candy time, and this meant two less.  My eyes have had years of training to accurately determine which glass has more pop and which seventh of the Milky Way bar is actually bigger, though my mother went to great lengths to make sure they were all the same size.  I also developed a handy knack of plotting my day around coveted food items.  A box of Golden Grahams has 8 servings.  Given we were each allowed one bowl of cereal in the morning and there were 7 of us, you can be certain that I was an early riser the following morning lest I be stuck with Wheaties.

When seeking inspiration for a blog post this morning, I found myself reading the story of young Samuel sleeping in the night and hearing his name called.  He went to the priest Eli, with whom he lived, several times, before Eli told him it must be God calling him.  Samuel waited for God to call out to him again, and received a prophecy regarding Eli's sons.  Originally I thought the inspiration for this Scripture was in that storyline, but the verse that follows is what lead me to describe my family's eating habits.  1 Samuel 3:19, "The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground."

My initial interpretation with this verse is likely incorrect.  My original thought was that it described Samuel's value for the Word, hence my thoughts on how my children are so careful with the food they value.  But as I investigated further, it appears that it might be referring to Samuel's gift of prophecy and how what he testified to, came to be.  Regardless, the thought of gobbling up God's Word, letting none of it go to waste, is biblically sound.  Are you careless with that nourishment?  Or is it a sweetness that leaves you seeking more?

Too often I think we are willing to accept the notion that God's Word is archaic or too difficult to understand or apply.  It washes away the guilty feelings one may have for not reading it.  But we cause ourselves malnourishment of the spirit when we feed on the "sweetness" of this world and neglect the fruits the Lord has prepared for us.  Isaiah 55:10-12, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  You will go out in joy and be lead forth in peace..."  What a picture this paints!  Budding and flourishing, seed and bread, and joy and peace.  All for the one who will devour it.

When I was pregnant with Colette, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  I was 172 pounds at the start of the pregnancy and though I thought I was a relatively healthy eater, I struggled with my weight.  The diagnosis lead to a better understanding of the affects my daily food choices have on my health and how I generally feel.  After overhauling my relationship with food, I can easily identify overindulgence or imbalanced diet as factors in my energy and mood.  I feel so much better now that I understand the nutritional needs of my body.

Our spiritual health is no different.  What does you diet consist of?  Are you indulging in movies, music and tv shows that leave you spiritually lethargic?  Are you bloated with negativity, anger, and sorrow?  Perhaps it is time for a spiritual diet.  Fill up on the bread of life and the everlasting water, and you will be surprised how little you will desire the "food" of this world.

 

A Test of Love?

I have a two year old.  This means I frequently find my patience, endurance, and sanity being tested.  "It's all about being more stubborn than she is," I often find myself saying to the sympathetic listener, or to no one at all, but simply as a means of committing myself to the idea.  Mary has mastered two entirely frustrating characteristics of the two year old.  First, she can ignore her name repeatedly called whether you are two inches from her face or juggling a baby and dinner prep in the kitchen whilst she is exploring mischievous opportunities in the bathroom upstairs.  Secondly, her ability to play chicken with the "1,2, 3 threat" has the makings of a daredevil.  Just as your lips begin to form the threatening "three" smackdown and you are prepared to rush her off to Timeout Land, her body launches into action at lightning speed, completing whatever simple request she had been resisting.

I heard it once said that if you pray for patience, you better be prepared for all the opportunities God would be sending your way to try your patience.  Upon hearing such wisdom, I panicked.  I had been praying for patience...a lot.  I realized all of those times that I prayed for patience at the end of an exhausting day, I was really looking for respite from having my patience tried.  I did not consider that in order to grasp the concept of patience, I would have to experience opportunities that cause impatience- Mary insisting that she has to put her shoes on when I am in a hurry to leave, Colette requiring detailed explanation about why there are still kids at the park when I am trying to rush her home because Julia's diaper has exploded, the phone call that I cannot get to end despite multiple attempts to bring attention to the chaos developing in my background.

I guess it would be safe to say I do not like to be tested.  For this reason, I have often felt unsettled when reading Bible stories of God testing the faith of His followers: Job, Abraham, the Israelites when they were traveling to the Promised Land, and the disciples.  It almost appeared cruel to me that an all-knowing God would need to test those that loved Him.  Why would He need to test Abraham's faithfulness; He who knows the hearts of man?  What could knowledge could He gain of us that He did not already know?

It was years of confusion before I realized the gain was all mine.  Through testing our hearts, God learns nothing new of us, but reveals to us His goodness and faithfulness, and our own shortcomings.  How can my faith be strong if it is never exercised?  As an athlete trains his body, enduring strenuous activities to strengthen and prepare himself, so should our faith be in constant trial.  If through competing, an athlete learns of his weaknesses, he does not pack up and go home, but uses the knowledge to prepare himself better.

In grade school I viewed tests simply as opportunity to boast about how smart I was.  The grade was the end goal.  Never did I use the test results to understand my needs as a student.  Perhaps this is why I resented testing from God.  There was little to boast about and I felt defeated; another "F" for patience and no amount of prayer seemed to bring about the magical transformation for which I pleaded.  God was not simply looking for a passing grade.  He was revealing to me the cause of my impatience.  From my failing grade, He wanted me to gain lasting knowledge of self that would cause me to be a conqueror of impatience.    

As Christians we should expect trials of faith regularly.  Our attitude as they approach should be, "Lord, what can I gain from this?  How will you teach me?"  And our faith should lead us to believe that we will come out stronger, purer in heart, and prepared for the next challenge.  Let us not forget that Jesus was tested by the devil with several temptations so that we might learn from the champion of our faith how to become triumphant ourselves.    

Mountain Moved

Sometimes I feel like there is some sort of plug between my brain and my hands that stops up the flow of words swimming in my brain that are trying to get out on paper.  My blog entry from last week, "Moving Mountains," was actually a river of emotion that had been dammed for several weeks before I could express it.  In layman's term, I suffer from frequent "writer's block," but I am more convinced God is behind it.

I have often humbly considered and hoped that God has worked through this blog.  As a member of the Blogger community, I am able to view statistics regarding the number of reads my blog gets.  Of specific interest to me, I can see internet word searches that landed on my blog.  A number of times I have blogged about a topic and discovered searches with that specific content in mind, made within hours of posting, that are guided to my blog.  In these moments, I feel very certain that God intended me to write for that individual.

It was weeks ago that I began to feel like a burdensome mountain in the way of God's work.  It was so evident to me that it was preposterous how difficult I found it to reflect the thought on paper.  Writing is all about release for me; an idea seems to grow in my head, budging room for the thinking that is necessary for daily functioning until I free them on paper and find myself able to think again.  Yet, the words would not form with many a revisited effort.  So I left the inspiration tucked in my draft folder, a folder I very rarely reopen.  I am a one-draft kind of girl as proofreading assuredly leads me to believe that my writing is garbage.

So there the mountain-of-an-idea sat for several weeks in my draft box, while I blogged away about other topics.  One day while reviewing the traffic sources that lead to my blog, I was very sobered by the word search hits for that week- "Has God seen me in eternity?," "Shame of sin, unworthy of God's love," "Do we have miracles in everyday life?," and "Why do I struggle with doubt in Christ?"  My heart felt weighted by the thought that these people were seeking God on the internet, and a blog that I wrote might be a chance at finding Him.  Who were they?  Where were they?  What lead them?  And most heavily I considered, "Why me?"  Why did God lead them to me?  And had I sufficiently assured them of His grace and love?  To think that I have taken this blog lightly at times...

Suddenly, the mountain started moving.  I typed away at my thoughts of standing in the way of God's work in me and through me.  I confessed that I feel there are often deep roots linking my behind to a chair, making me a more sturdy mountain than Everest.  The idea was released and my mind set free as I clicked the orange "Publish Post" button.  An hour later, God revealed just the kind of work He can do in moving mountains- two people had searched the topic "moving mountains" and landed on my blog.

What my blog did or did not do for these people, I will never know.  What I do know is that God works through the offerings of His children when those offerings have been made according to His will.  My "two cents" offerings may not seem like much value to this world, as I am not an acclaimed writer or an educated theologian, but as a mere housewife, God can take what I offer in my writing to touch the heart of a reader and make it invaluable, only because He is behind it.

That power is in you, too.  God has equipped you to make offerings in His Name that will do immeasurable good to the soul of another.  It may be disguised in the simple- a hug, a word of encouragement, a warm meal- but given in His Name, it has the power to be miraculous.  Don't consider yourself to be a miracle-worker?  Take a step in His Name and see where it leads you.