A Lesson on Eating

Five-year-olds are great. They are sweet, innocent, energetic, and out of their mouths come the wisest things, sometimes. We were at a big family gathering last week, and I was thrilled to see all of the (step) children and grandchildren again. ( I put the step in there so you would know that I am really not that old!) I don't realize how much I miss them all until we get together and have such good times. This particular occasion was a milestone birthday for 2 in the family. The great lunch meal had been prepared and served, and a small group of the adults was sitting around the the dining room table, letting things settle before the ordeal of the desert of cake and ice cream. We were enjoying our visit.

Andy, the youngest of the grandchildren at age 5, appeared at the table next to his mother. He surveyed the situation seriously for a moment, and then asked incredulously, “You mean you're done eating and you're just sitting here?” He had a definite 'What's your problem?' look on his face. To a small boy, it was incomprehensible. Why would anyone be finished with the task of having to sit down and eat, and still be sitting around? Come on... everyone knows that the only reason one sits down and eats is so one can have the energy and fuel to get up and do something- to get back on with the business of life and play! Andy's mom answered that this is just something adults do (just sit around after they eat).

I wonder if that is what we tend to do spiritually, too. We feast on the presence of God in our lives and then just sit around and enjoy the moments, but never really do anything with the energy our spiritual food has given us. We enjoy the wonderful times of worship and the inspiring and challenging messages from God's Word that we hear preached at our meetings. We glean knowledge and understanding from our personal and corporate times of Bible study and prayer, but what do we do with it? I wonder if many times, as “adult” Christians, we just sit around and visit in the plenty of it all.

God says we are to be as little children in the kingdom (Matthew 18:3). Andy would never think of just sitting around. Especially after enjoying the plenty and the energy received from it. Energy is meant to be expended, not just hoarded. It is in the expending of our energy that enjoyment is found. So what should we, as children of the Kingdom, be doing after we eat (take in God's word and presence) or feast on God's presence in our lives? Just what Andy wanted to do. He wanted to engage other people in his surroundings. He wanted to do something. We, too, need to be doers of God's Word and will, and not simply hearers. It was the “hearers” that were sitting around after dinner, “resting”. It is the doers that were taking the energy received in the dinner and expending it on others and with others. Similarly, do we want to be one of the “resters” or the doers- who take God's energy and power within us and expend it on, with, and for those around us, those whom our lives touch. They need what we have been freely given. The “dinner” if you will, is available to all. It is those of us who have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8), who then need to get up from the table and do something with the nutrition that we have obtained. Don't worry if you don't know what to do. God will show you. He will speak to your heart the direction that He wants you to go in with His energy within you. We just have to be willing to get up from the table and go.

“Cause me to hear Your loving kindness in the morning, for on You do I lean and in You do I trust. Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my inner being to You.” Psalm 143:8