Food

Here's the thing.... I have a love/hate relationship with food. Most of the time I'm able to live a normal life, which means I eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm full, and thoroughly enjoy all food given to me. But occasionally I find myself battling the very nutrients designed to keep me alive and well. I don't always love my body, and therefore in my vain efforts to control it, I allow food to become the enemy. I have full confidence I will never again battle a full blown eating disorder (as I have in the past), however I would be lying if I said my relationship with food was perfectly balanced on a consistent basis. I'm human.... I fail everyday. But I have confidence the Lord is on my side. There is no battle He cant win. My issues with food are no match for the Lord's power and strength.

After having a rather strained day with food yesterday, it was no coincidence that this mornings devotional topic was regarding food and gluttony. It was rather fitting actually. After reading and meditating on Matthew 6:25 (quoted below), I then decided to read a few chapters from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. As I turned to were I left off, my mouth dropped open when the passage I began to read touched on the subject of gluttony and food obsession. Hmm- ok Lord, you got my attention... I'm listening now. These were the words I read....

(keep in mind these words are being said by one of Satan's demons)

"...but what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern?

In a crowded restaurant the woman will give a scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has placed before her and says, 'Oh, thar's far far too much! Take it away and bring me a quarter of it.' If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want... her belly now dominates her whole life."

Matthew 6:25-31

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?'