Have You Eaten Yet?

             Have you eaten yet today?  I know once the hunger pangs set in and the old stomach starts growling, it’s pretty tough to ignore the tummy.  Food for us is like gasoline for an automobile.  And with no fuel, be it us or a car, nothing is going to be able to function.  If a car runs out of fuel its engine dies.  Similarly, if we run out of fuel we die, too.  The big difference here is we can not, like a combustion engine, be brought back to life simply by putting in more fuel at that point.  The need to feed is a built in survival instinct.  But our desire to be healthy and feel satisfied also drives our food consumption in a more inconspicuous way.

             But the Bible tells us that man does not live by bread alone (Deut. 8:3).  Jesus quoted this Scripture to Satan while being tempted in the wilderness (Mat. 4:4) reiterating the relevance of it under the New Covenant.  Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life in John 6:35, 48.  Through out the Bible, the Word of God is identified as Food for the soul (Job 23:12, Psalm 119:103, Jer. 15:16, 1 Pet. 2:2) and we are instructed to ingest it (Ezek. 2:8; 3:1, Rev. 9:9-10).

            The lesson here is a simple one: To have a healthy, satisfied soul, we need to feed out spirit and the Food is the Bible; just as our bodies require regular nourishment, so does the soul.  We don’t feed our bellies once every few days or at even longer intervals, do we?  Neither, then, can we feed our souls less often than daily.  Feeding the soul gives the same benefits of feeding the body; a feeling of satisfaction, growth, health, to name but a few.  But think of the benefits that “soul food” gives us that feeding of the body can not, considering that our soul is immortal and the body but a temporary vessel.  We ought to, then, consider our spiritual diet even more important than out physical feeding.

            We need to tie on the spiritual feed bag and fill our souls with the Bread of Life.  And we need to do it not every-so-often but every day. So, I ask again, have eaten yet today? 

Image by PinkMoose via Flickr