A LOT TO DIGEST
The digestive system is the body’s way of cutting down the food our bodies consume by breaking down chemicals into smaller parts that then can be absorbed and put to good work through the blood stream. It starts in the mouth where teeth and saliva work first, then later the chemicals in the stomach work to do their job as well. Next, the gastrointestinal systems take over as the small and large intestines complete the task and finally the unnecessary remains are eliminated. It is an absolutely remarkable system in that every different food item taken in is used and then later eliminated in different ways—its almost as if the body at times knows exactly what it needs and how to use it.
But there can be problems. Blockages, bloating, gall stones, diabetes, and dozens of more problems can occur inside the friendly confines of the body, and often times these problems have taken place despite the person doing everything right and eating the correct amount of food quantity and quality.
During the end of the Nazi Holocaust, when the brave American soldiers arrived at what was left of the work camps, they experienced sights of death that had never been seen before in all of history. And for some of those newly freed captives who were still alive, there was an amazing discovery. Some of those close to death actually had lost the ability to intake food. As soldiers fed bread to those near death, the bread was actually spit out of their mouths because the body had already cannibalized itself from all remaining muscles and fat mass making food consumption impossible. Though stories like that were rare, they were well told from one soldier to another.
The Bible has a lot to say about food and food consumption. In fact, there are many scriptural references detailing the similarities between what we read from the Bible and how we take in spiritual food for the purpose of growing closer to the Lord. Hebrews 5 states “On this topic we have much to say and it is difficult to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing. For though you should in fact be teachers at this time, you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. You have gone back to needing milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced in the message of righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is good for the mature, whose perceptions are trained by practice to discern both good and evil.”
What the scripture is essentially telling us is that there is at some point a spiritual expectation that a person can consume strong Biblical messages because their soul has accepted them through a regular diet. But, the honest truth was that the people who should already been strong enough in their faith to be preparing their own spiritual feasts for other people: in reality they were only able to drink the simplest of all foods, like milk. How sad. One can only wonder if some of those people, or even the people around us, have gone without spiritual food for so long that their intake towards God’s Word is closer to that of a Holocaust survivor’s digestive system than that of the Biblical giant that God created them to be.
Friends, with the New Year upon us, let us all do something that we should have been doing all along…eating. And eating the healthy spiritual food given to us by God through the Scriptures so we can all live Biblically healthy in 2009.