The Real Deal

I haven't had much of an appetite over the past few days.  I have had a bit of a stomach bug and haven't felt much like eating.  And when I have eaten, it has been predominantly carbohydrate-based.

 

I have had very little fruit or veg over the last few days; in fact, my Vitamin intake today has consisted of a Vitamin C fizzy tablet in water.

 

I'm sure it's still good for me, but it can't be as good as eating actual fruit and veg and getting the vitamins and minerals that way.

 

In the same way, I think I sometimes skimp on my 'spiritual food': I make do with supplements and 'tablets'.  I listen to talks and worship songs and I read books and blogs and all of these things are good.  But they're not the same as spending time with God myself.  They don't have the same 'nutritional value'.

 

If we want to know what God is like, if we want a relationship with Him, if we want to grow and change and become more like Him, we need to see Him.  And we need to spend time with Him.

 

And we do that through Jesus, who came to show us what God Himself is like:

"God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful."

 

[2 Corinthians 4:6 MSG] 

 

Sometimes it's much easier and cheaper to pop a pill, rather than buying and preparing actual fruit and veg, but it's never as good.  It's not the real deal.  It's not as good for our bodies, or for our health.  And in the same way, spending time reading or singing or writing or talking about God is never as good as spending time with God.

 

 

 

Wrapping Paper

There is nothing more irritating when you have given someone a present, than watching them open it  r-e-a-l-l-y   s-l-o-w-l-y. 

 

You know what it is that you've bought them and you're excited to see their face when they unwrap it, but the longer it takes them to get into the present, the more irritating it becomes.

 

I remember a friend telling me several years ago how his nephews had been more interested in the wrapping paper that their Christmas presents had been wrapped in, than the actual presents themselves.  As soon as they had unwrapped their gifts, they had screwed up the wrapping paper to make a football and spent longer playing with that than they did with their gifts.

 

When it comes to Christmas, sometimes we can get distracted by the 'wrapping paper' too - the extra bits that the real Christmas message is wrapped in.

 

You hear people saying Christmas starts at home, or Christmas is all about family.  We focus on the gifts and the decorations and spending time with loved ones and eating a lot and drinking a lot and watching TV and going to parties and going to nativity plays and carol services.

 

And these things are all good.

 

But they are only the wrapping paper.  They are only the packaging for the real message, the real gift of Christmas.

 

These things are all good, but they cannot save us, or bring us life.

 

Only Jesus can do that.

 

“And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins [...] 

        Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
        She will give birth to a son,
        and they will call him Immanuel,
        which means ‘God is with us.’”

 

       [Matthew 1:21, 23 NLT]

 

 

Let's not let ourselves get distracted by the wrapping paper and the 'packaging' this Christmas.  Let's look beyond the food and the drink and the decorations and the parties and the church services.  Let's look beyond it all and peer into the crib, until we can see the tiny baby who came to save our world.

 

 

 

 

 

Make A Meal Of It

I have just spotted that the yoghurt I bought yesterday has the phrase "Eat well, feel uplifted" on the lid.

 

That's a pretty bold claim.

 

I have definitely experienced some degree of uplifting from a satisfying meal - a warming casserole on a winter's night; hot bread or cake straight from the oven; butter melting down the sides of a jacket potato (I am making myself hungry just writing those).  But I'm not sure that food can really uplift us in the long-term.

 

I love it when supermarkets have samples of food - pieces of cake, cubes of cheese, sometimes even thimbles of something alcoholic.

 

However, whilst these are tasty, they are not a meal in themselves.

 

They don't satisfy.

 

They whet our appetite and create a longing for something more.

 

In the same way, if we just sample snippets of God's word, nibbling our way through odd passages here and there, we will never feel satisfied.  We won't be truly uplifted.

 

We need to take the time to sit down and 'eat' God's word.  We need to make space to savour His words and chew things over.  We need to be like the Psalmist who said, 

 

        "You thrill to God's Word,
        you chew on Scripture day and night."

 

        [Psalm 1:2 MSG]

 

Or,

 

       "I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you,
       I attentively watch how you’ve done it.
       I relish everything you’ve told me of life,
       I won’t forget a word of it."

 

       [Psalm 119:16 MSG]

 

 

We need to make a meal out of God's word.  Not just a snack, which staves off our hunger for a short while, but doesn't really satisfy.  But a sit-down, take-your-time, three-course meal.

 

Yes, it's more effort.  But it is also more satisfying.

 

And, like any really good meal, it leaves us wanting more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guilty Pleasures

Ben and Jerry's Vermonster.  Häagen Dazs Pralines and Cream.  Galaxy whole nut.  Plain tortilla chips.  Thai Sweet Chili Crisps.  Salt and Pepper crisps.  An entire tub of sweet/salty popcorn to myself.

 

These, to me, are all what the world calls 'guilty pleasures'.  Things I know I shouldn't finish off in one sitting, but struggle to stop once I've started because they're too tasty.  I listened to part of a discussion today on the radio about guilty pleasures and what people indulged in which they knew they ought not to.

 

But isn't the phrase 'guilty pleasures' a bit of an oxymoron? 

 

Nigella Lawson writes,

"I don't call them guilty pleasures because I don't believe anything pleasurable should feel guilty."

 

Well said Nigella.

 

If something is pleasing or 'pleasurable' and enjoyable, why should we feel guilty?

 

I think sometimes we can feel guilty because we have a misconception about God: we think that He is a spoilsport who frowns on what we see as 'fun'.  We don't think He has a sense of humour and imagine that He is only interested in the serious stuff.  He tut-tuts or looks away when we are enjoying ourselves, because we ought to be sensible and straight-laced all the time. 

 

One of the things I love about our church is how much fun we have and how much we enjoy ourselves.  And that's the way it's meant to be.  God created us to live full and fulfilling lives and part of that is enjoying the good gifts that He has given us.

 

The Bible says,

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father."

[James 1:17 NIV, emphasis mine]

 

The good things in life are from God and He gave them to us for our enjoyment.

 

The problem comes when these good gifts are abused and distorted.  When we start using people as a way to meet our own needs or to satisfy our desires.  When we can no longer say 'no' to these pleasures.  When they start to 'control' us, rather than us being in control of them.  When we really can't put down the tub of ice-cream, or put the biscuits away whilst there are still some left in the packet. 

 

You can have too much of a good thing.  As anyone who has overeaten can probably testify.

 

That's when these things cease to be pleasurable.  They become compulsive, obsessive, addictive.  We end up with 'guilty addictions,' not 'guilty pleasures'.

 

And so the good gifts that God has given us become tainted, stained with our own dependence on them.  What was given as a good and perfect gift is ruined and reduced to something which we feel we need in order to be happy.

 

It is not God's intention for us to feel guilty about enjoying the good things in life: He gives them to us for our pleasure.  But we need to make sure that we don't become dependent on them for our happiness or our fulfilment because, ultimtely, they can't satisfy our deepest needs and desires. 

 

Only He can.

 

 

 

Real Food

I found myself ordering a salad the other evening from a food outlet which advertised its "real food".  Now, I haven't been tempted to eat pretend plastic food since my childhood, so I found the promotional technique a little odd.

What else would I be looking for other than "real food"?

I think the advertising ploy was intended to conjure up images of handmade, lovingly crafted, good-for-you food, the kind of food you'd cook at home and know was both healthy and tasty.  I think it was a statement of a shift away from the mass-produced, deep-fried, instant food of many fast food outlets. 

It got me thinking about what we mean by 'real', especially by 'real food' in a spiritual sense: something that will satisfy our deepest hunger and will 'do us good'.

We all hunger.  For meaning, for significance, for purpose.  We want to know that we matter, that we belong and that we are loved.  It is a hunger and a desire in each of us, which reaches to the depths our beings.

We try to fill this hunger in many different ways and with many different 'foods'.  We turn to money and wealth and jobs and fame and popularity and 'coolness' and relationship and friendship and children and sex and alcohol and TV and clothes and books and the list goes on and on.

And all of these things fill us for a little while.  Some even taste good.

But they don't satisfy our hunger for long.  We always want more.  They can't satisfy the very depths of our longings.

There is only one 'real food' who can satiate our hunger: Jesus.

He described Himself as providing this "real food" and nourishment for our spirits and our souls:

"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

[John 6:35 NLT]

And He warned,

"Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food [...] work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides."

[John 6:27 MSG]

One of my favourite songs which considers this issue is by Plumb and is called 'God Shaped Hole' (you might recognise it from the film 'Bruce Almighty').  These are the words -

Every point of view has another angle
And every angle has its merit
But it all comes down to faith
That's the way I see it

You can say that love is not divine and
You can say that life is not eternal
"All we have is now"
But I don't believe it

There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And the restless soul is searching
There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And it's a void only He can fill

Does the world seem grey with empty longing
Wearing every shade of cynical?
And do you ever feel that
There is something missing?

I would love to say that when I feel hungry, I always opt for the "real food" option - both literally and spiritually - but all too often I prefer the cheap, fast easy alternatives.  As I continue to grow in my relationship with Jesus I want to be able to say, in the words of the song,
"Hungry I come to You, For I know You satisfy."

Microwave Meals and Take-aways

Aah, the weekend.  A time for relaxing and resting and recuperating.  A time for taking it easy.

And one of the main ways that we take it easy at the weekend is to indulge in microwave meals or takeaways.

Apparently us Brits consume a whopping 2 billion take-aways a year and 40% of us order one once a week.  Combine that with the fact that 83% of us regularly purchase microwave meals due to convenience and you have some pretty hefty statistics.

They are so easy and convenient and (usually) tasty.  We can put in the minimum amount of effort - simply making a phone call, or ordering online, or pricking a cellophane wrapper and pressing a few buttons - et voila, we have a meal in minutes.

But unfortunately these convenient meals aren't very good for us.  It may be cheaper and easier for us to microwave something rather than spending a long time peeling and chopping and boiling and baking, but these meals are usually loaded with fat and sugar and additives.

Whilst it takes longer to prepare and cook a 'proper meal', it is much better for us when we do.

Sometimes our faith can be like this, too - we want something quick and convenient.  Something not too costly and which requires the minimum input from us.  Something from which we can get 'nourishment' without having to 'cook'.

We don't always want to put in the effort.  And we don't always like waiting. 

But sometimes waiting is best for us.  We grow in the waiting.  Our faith is stretched and strengthened in the waiting.

"Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.  We are enlarged in the waiting.  We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us.  But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy."

[Romans 8:27 MSG]

"God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks.  It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God.  It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times."

[Lamentations 3:25-27 MSG]

We can choose to eat raw, uncooked food before it's properly 'done'.  In most cases, it probably won't harm us too badly, but we won't get much nourishment from it.  We won't get as much from it as we could.

It's the same with our faith.

The proof, as they say, is in the 'pudding'.