You Are What You Eat

If a nursing mother eats fajitas for lunch — fajitas piled high with onions and peppers and salsa and pico de gallo — she’s going to be up all night. Not because she’s sick, but because her baby is sick. The fajitas have become a part of her. You are what you eat.

I look in the mirror and I can plainly see the Big Macs and cheese tator tots and Lay’s Kettle-Cooked potato chips. They have become a part of me. The biggest part of me!

Eating the Word, meditating on the holy words of our God, causes them to become a part of us. And when those words get inside us, we’d better respond.

“The story of the manna gathered and set aside by the Hebrews is deeply significant. It so happened that the manna rotted when it was kept. And perhaps this means that all spiritual reading which is not consumed — by prayer and works — ends by causing a sort of rotting inside us. You die with a head full of fine sayings and a perfectly empty heart.” ~Julian Green, Diaries, 1955

It’s not enough to just admire the Bible. It’s not enough, even, to understand it. God has spoken and we must respond. The Creator of Heaven and Earth is speaking and we must act. He breathes and we inhale. He calls and we come. He saves and we praise. He commands and we obey. He invites and we eat.  

God intends for his Word —inviting, commanding, challenging, rebuking, judging, comforting, directing, loving — to move us. To become a part of who we are and then compel us to act his Word out in ways that reflect his glory and transform our own lives and the lives of the people around us.

Savor some of those words today. Read them. Taste them. Lean back with your eyes closed and allow the meaning and the purpose of a couple of lines really get into your blood.

Peace,

Allan