Even when I was a small child, my appetite was more in line with what adults should be eating. I would fill my plate, and then I would do my best to clean it, making it a “happy plate.”
I can remember being at different church meals, even visiting with my grandparents, and hearing the phrase (said after seeing my plate piled high with food), “If you eat all of that, you’re going to be sick!”
I always dismissed it.
Thinking back on it, though, I often remember having a feeling after I ate. It was a feeling of being “stuffed.” I thought that’s what it meant to be full. Curiously, sometimes that feeling of being “stuffed” also felt a lot like being “sick.”
I would do my best, though, to convince myself that I wasn’t sick. I was uncomfortable, but not sick. I couldn’t let the adults be right! I couldn’t show them any weakness!
It’s only as I matured into adulthood that I started to make the connection between eating too much, weight gain, and the misery that ensued. When I ate too much, and felt sick, no matter how much I tried to reason it away, I was reaping what I had sown!
Sometimes I’m deeply saddened when I look at the lives of certain people and the problems they share with me. It’s not just because of the problems themselves, but it’s when they tell me their rationalization, I mean, story, as to how they “found” themselves in the situation they are in that really makes me sad. As they tell me of the decisions they made, I can see where they went wrong. Sadly, many times, they can’t. After all, everyone has a reason (excuse).
The mantras, “That’s life,” or, “Life happens,” are a verbal way of tossing off our responsibility for our problems. Paul stated it this way in Galatians 6:7-8:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption [emp, D.H.], but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. ” (NKJV)
Sometimes we want to be like children. We want to pass off the responsibility for our problem to “fate.” But “God is not mocked.” We may want for God to be wrong about the consequences of our actions. We may even think we can outsmart Him. But in the end, we will “reap” the kind of lifestyle that we “sow”. You can count on it.
The good news is that the principle of sowing and reaping works not only to the negative, but to the positive. We can sow “to the Spirit”, and reap those things as well (see. Galatians 5:22-24). What kind of life are you sowing?
~Daniel Howell
No comments:
Post a Comment