how hungry are you?

pic1.jpgHer first pot roast was akin to a burnt offering. She felt terrible about it. I considered it a culinary mulligan. History has proven it to be exactly that. My wife is the finest cook that I know.

It was simply common sense, not pre-marital counseling, that told me this early misfire should not be compared to my mother’s cooking. I don’t know if you have ever made that type of comparison verbally but I would advise against it. If you have already done this and you have gotten the reaction that most people get, let me just say this . . . “You deserve whatever you got . . . that was a stupid thing to say.”

Every pastor that I know has had someone make similar remarks about their “cooking”. There is always someone in the pews who is not getting fed. Normally this is not because there is no food but because someone doesn’t like what is on the menu. It is true in the world of nutrition that the things that are the best for us are the least appealing to our taste buds. As a matter of fact, the more we try to make them desirably palatable, the more value we extract from them. Vegetables overcooked have diminished nutritional benefit.

In spiritual adolescence, we are enamored by the desserts and you know what that makes us ultimately. It makes us overweight and inactive. If people are not fed in church, the greatest factor is their level of hunger.

On camping trips I have found the simplest of meals, prepared in the most primitive conditions to be abnormally delicious. Why? You know the answer to that . . . because I have been hungry when I approached the “table”. No one can help you with that. Hunger is the result of internal processes. Activity increases hunger. Want to get more out of Sunday’s sermon? Get busy between Sundays. Watch the intake of “junk foods” . . . they make a poor substitute for solid healthy food. “Self-help” foods are nothing more than that and there does come a point where all that you can do to “help yourself” is pitifully inadequate. How hungry are you brother or sister? If you are not hungry, it doesn’t make any difference how good the meal may be. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.”