The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.
The titles for cookbooks are always interesting: “Visible Vegetables”, “Glorious Garlic”, “50 Ways with Fish”, “Cooking for Dummies”, “Dad’s Own Cookbook: Everything Your Mother Never Taught You.”
The titles for diet books are also interesting: “The Weigh Down Diet”, “Controlling Your Fat Tooth”, “The Ten Habits of Naturally Slim People”. Habit number 8 is: Only eat when you are hungry. Why didn’t I think of that? This reminds me of the refrigerator magnet I once saw. It read, “A waist is a terrible thing to mind!”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a healthy concern for our bodies. It’s admirable, really. The “body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19,). But I wonder if this obsession with getting food into us, and then getting those unwanted pounds off of us, isn’t perhaps symptomatic of something else. A God Flash
We may pursue what is material when what we really need is spiritual. The hunger that drives us to cookbooks and restaurants and then, to diet clubs or health clubs, is the emptiness inside of us. This is the emptiness we try to pack with possessions, the way we may try to fill ourselves up with more recognition, more titles, more awards, more experiences. Could these not be our spiritual emptiness crying out for God?
What are some of the “mores” in your life today?
