You Are What You Eat - Mark 7:20-23,29

Mark 7:20-23, 29

Over this past summer I was afflicted with an illness. The illness would be hard to explain in this space and I already write more that most people want to read in one sitting already.  Suffice it to say that my illness was throughout me, top to toe, inside to out.  I am very pleased and thankful to say today that I am quite a new man. Am I healed? Well that is another interesting question. Healed yes, but not completely or forever without risk of relapse.  The extent and the duration of my health (inner and otherwise) is dependent on a number of variables.

Many times people, who have been sick, when they become better or are healed if you like, forget that state very quickly and end up living the very life that they led up to their calamity. So if I were to be asked am I healed I would most likely have to answer that my life is completely different today than it was 5 months ago.  I am a new creature, by the Grace of God and the care and support of my family and friends.  My ongoing health depends on those very same things.  I could too easily be quite sick and negotiating with death on the terms of my departure and his possession of my soul should I wander too far from the things that I needed to do to have the health that I enjoy today.

Lets me be clear about something.  I experienced a very physical disease and it controlled my physical self, but my spiritual self was also quite sick and in need of a deep healing.  The journey from ill to well was and is marked with many lessons for my whole life (physical and spiritual).

One of the changes that I was helped to make in my physical life was to the kinds of things I put into my body - food and drink.  The title of this devotion is a very old proverb or axiom. In a book from 1826 an author whose name I cant pronounce wrote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are".  His meaning was to tie the physical condition of a person to the diet that they regularly partook of.  The truth of this saying is still valid and perhaps more so today given the abundance of things that are advertised and sold to us as "food" but that are really chemicals and processed forms of foods that bear no likeness to their original form, and in some cases are in fact toxic rather than nutritious. Im not trying to be a food Nazi but I am quite serious about this food thing.

Anyway every good thing that we eat and drink is nothing more than fuel for this amazing machine called the human body. Down to the smallest cell what we take in is translated into the building block materials to continue this human life. Too much of somethings is bad and not enough of somethings is bad. For instance going on a low or no carb diet could be very, very bad for someone who does or might suffer from depression, because carbohydrates are one of the building blocks for the neurotransmitter Seritonin. And thats the way the body works everything is made out of something. The wiring in our bodies, the messenger systems, the coverings, the levers and pulleys.  Everything is made out of something and that something comes from what we put in our mouths and consume as "food".

The scriptures that are at the start of this devotion, to me show a stark contrast between something coming out of someone who has taken in only junk and someone else who has taken in things wholesome and nutritious.

How do these evil defiling things come out of a person? Where did they come from? What building blocks were taken in to assemble an evil thought or murder or foolishness?  Somewhere during the day this person was unconcerned with what went into their lives and that carelessness manifest itself in the list of things that can and do come OUT of a person. This idea of the outside affecting the inside is pretty easy to understand.

Part of this new way of eating for my wife and I includes trying hard to avoid processed food.  The challenge is that when you avoid or exclude processed ingredients or additives the food that you buy or make just doesn't have much of a shelf life.  A loaf of wonder bread can site in the bread box for days and even weeks.  It will get hard and dry before it starts to turn green. Most of the things that extend shelf life are in fact chemical in nature and, well not to be too dramatic, they can be toxic to humans.  In the least they are not helping us attain health and well being.

A lot of what we eat we eat only because it tastes good. There you have to tongue, that unruly member, controlling the entire body and the life that the body experiences.  Taste is important but taste alone can be a trap.

Ok nearly finished. On the other hand the last verse in the title shows that something quite different came out of another person. What came out was evidence of faith, it was evidence that they had taken into their body and life things that led them to life and not destruction.  Some of the things that she took in may have been bitter to her and hard to tolerate, but she knew she needed to have them so in they went.  Some things may have seemed a waste of time because their evidence was slow in coming, but she knew she needed them so in they went. Some things might not have made a lick of sense to her, like seven dunks in a puddle (an old sermon reference) but she knew that she needed them.  She needed them for that moment she was faced with.

Asking was not enough. She needed to persevere through the pain that the first answer might have raised and drawing on the deep storehouse of grace and patience and reverence that she had accumulated she gave out of herself again, " True Lord, but the dogs under the kings table eat the scraps that the Kings children throw on the floor".  That response was the key to unlocking her great lifes desire. Jesus said, "because of this saying, go thy way, the devil is gone out of your daughter."  I dont think she asked again. I dont think she wanted clarification. I dont think that she wondered or hesitated. In fact I can see this woman turning and gathering up her garments and running back to her house to see the thing that the Lord had done.

Becareful what goes into these bodies of ours. Remember we take things in through the eye gate, the ear gate and the mouth gate.  Lets get hungry for the pure Word of God, no artificial sweetners added or needed.  Lets get serious about pushing away from the table where things might taste good but are not good for us. We can do this. We may need a new hunger and new tastes but those things come as we take them in. The old will lose its sweetness and it will no longer satisfy when we ask of God bread and meat from his Word.

Proverbs 30:8 "give me only my daily bread" NIV