Follow your heart!

Listen to your body!

Two aphorisms glibly and yet soberly offered as though they were truth incarnate.

But the Bible teaches otherwise.  And I am learning –

  • NOT to lean on my own understanding
  • NOR to look to contemporary worldly messages to guide my thinking

As I journey with God, not having the guidance and parental examples of graceful, dependent Christian aging for inspiration, I am discovering to my surprise that God recycles His lessons.  Their very familiarity shocks me. Didn’t I just journal about this 2 months ago?  Didn’t I just discover this verse and sincerely pledge to let it guide me?

Yet, due to amnesia or just plain drifting or a diabolical plot, I HAVE forgotten.

But God is patient, apparently.

Walled garden

So once again, I have run back into my garden with its limits, relieved to be safely within the walls.  I shout with joy along with David and affirm, The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; Psalm 16:6a

Yes, dear friends, it’s about food again that I write.  I don’t know why I meandered away from what I had previously recognized WORKED.  But this time, God in providentially and lovingly allowing me to struggle through depressing self-absorption gave me deeper insight into the harmful thinking in which I’ve swum and lingered.

But it’s not fair!  I LIKE bread and yogurt and fruit and lots of salad stuff and veggies (and dark chocolate)…….

Yes, but as Paul says in chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians: “23 All things are legitimate [permissible—and we are free to do anything we please], but not all things are helpful (expedient, profitable, and wholesome). All things are legitimate, but not all things are constructive [to character] and edifying [to spiritual life].

Please read the entirety of Chapter 10, for the context sets up an even more powerful argument to support Paul’s conclusion in verse 23.

So, yes – just as the Hebrews yearned for seemingly healthy food items, an ‘innocent desire’ – “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost–also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” Exodus 11:5 – we must keep in mind that they were enslaved.

So too have I been enslaved by my desires.  I NOW see that the food my body desires is NOT healthy for it.  (I get plugged up and bloated, which sends me spiraling into a self-pity party.  If it sounds ‘sick’, it IS ‘sick’.  It’s called S-I-N!)

Hence my conclusion – that when authors and experts proclaim that our bodies crave what is good for them, we must respond ‘Phooey!’ Would you offer the same advice to a drug addict or alcoholic? Maybe it’s just the opposite – that we must take notice of what our body sidles up to and flee!

As for the other dangerous adage about following one’s heart, I’ll leave that for someone else to tackle.

As for me, I’m going to stay within my garden and thank God for the manna He has provided me this day.  He alone knows what is best for me, for He created me.