Ruined Appetites
Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. Lamentations 5:21
There is a chiropractor in Michigan who displayed a sample of the local fast food for over two years. None of it looks any different than the day it was purchased. There is no rot or mold evident in the food. It doesn’t even attract bugs. The point of the display was to remind patients that these food choices may look and even taste good, but are so packed with preservatives that they are actually really bad for our bodies. And yet, we crave them. I crave them. It’s the strangest thing. You’d think we’d want what is good for our bodies, but we don’t, we go for momentarily satisfying so much of the time, when we could eat healthier and reap the benefits of healthier bodies.
Garbage in… Garbage out. It’s a phrase our Pastor has used multiple times. We have to put into our mind, body, and spirit things that will give the results that we want to see. If we dull our spiritual appetite by constantly filling our mind with useless information or less than wholesome images and sounds, we never get hungry for the good stuff we should and could be feasting on. I can remember a time when I vehemently defended my television watching choices by saying, there isn’t anything better on, everybody watches it, or that’s just what America is like now. When I removed unsavory things from my view, it didn’t take long for me to begin to be shocked by the things I was hearing and seeing. When they’re going into our ears and eyes constantly, we become dulled to it. Our appetite for Godly things is dulled, and it’s easy to ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 21 from Lamentation 5 seems like a good prayer to God for restoration, but if you go and read all of chapter 5 of Lamentations, it quickly becomes obvious that God has already meted out his punishment on Israel and they are suffering terribly at the hands of their oppressors. Read a few of the descriptions of their suffering, and we can see that Israel was in deep trouble. They had been warned over and over again by various prophets to return to the Lord, and yet they continually ran to idols and disobeyed God’s commands. God had had enough. He had finally given them their last chance to return to Him, and they were reaping the punishment they were due.
It doesn’t take a hard look at America to see that we are in danger. We have put so many things above our service to the Lord, that we have forgotten what it is like to truly serve Him. We quickly rationalize missing a church service for any little excuse: “It’s raining.” “Family’s here.” “I’ve had a really hard week.” And the thing is, we all miss a church service occasionally, but when it becomes a habit, or a way of life; it’s indicative of a much deeper problem. I understand completely, from both sides of the issue. It got to the point that I rarely attended Sunday Night services, and dragging myself to Wednesday Night services seemed like a chore. Now, missing is not even an option for me. Has the preaching gotten that much better? I doubt it., it’s great, it’s probably always been great… we are very blessed with a pastor that seeks God carefully for every sermon. My heart, however, has gotten tremendously better. My heart has turned back… back to the place I should have been the whole time.
Our responsibility isn’t to change America. It’s to allow God to work in our own lives. And once we do that, we can begin to have an effect on our sphere of influence. And once He has an effect on our little world, those that we’re in contact with will begin to have an effect on their own world, and we create ripples that spread out and can indeed change the world.
It’s so much more than sitting in a pew. If showing up for church three times a week could fix everything, we’d probably be willing to do it. But, it’s allowing those lessons to sink in, to change us. It’s spending time outside of church reading the word, conversing with our Father… It’s getting up every single day and picking up our cross. It’s putting Him first, above everything, above family, above your spouse, above any worldly idol you’ve created in your life, whether it be an activity, a sport, or any of a thousand things that we tend to displace our responsibilities to God for. C. S. Lewis said it best:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - C. S. Lewis The Weight of Glory
There was a time in my children’s lives when just keeping them from eating junk until meal time seemed like a chore. They would ‘snack’ themselves full and then not want their dinner. As an empty nester, I’ve been guilty of the same thing. I roam the house all day on Saturdays nibbling on a hand full of nuts here and a piece of fruit there, and I’m never hungry for an actual meal. But let us plan an evening out at a nice restaurant, and my activities change. I will go all day with as little food as possible, because I want to enjoy the meal when we arrive at the restaurant. Isn’t He worth putting aside all of these unhealthy things we’re wasting our time on? He is! Let’s not ruin our appetite for things of the Lord with junk from this broken and sinful world!
