Thursday, March 28, 2013

Proverbs 15:17 Apples again?

Lately my retired husband, Don, who has taken on all of the domestic duties of the household (bless him), has been so busy taking care of things for his father and staying on top of our laundry (the urgent), that he has not had a chance to do any real grocery shopping, so our pantry looks bleak. Yet, we’ve managed for about three weeks to eek out decent meals. We had delicious chicken soup made with the leftover Costco chicken last night. And we’ll still get another meal out of this week. But when I went to find a late night snack last night, I left the pantry shaking my head. Nothing appealed to me. I was looking for a Skor bar, actually! :)

So, today’s verse spoke to me:

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is

    than a fattened ox and hatred with it. (Proverbs 15:17)

Even though I left the kitchen grumbling a little bit like the Israelites (“What? Manna again?”), I realized that 99% of the world would give anything to have access to my pantry! In fact, this week so would my own daughter Emmy and her family! They are in the middle of an experiment, based on the book, The 7 Experiment by Jen Hatmaker. It’s the book that their small group is going through together. The author’s purpose is to help us shed ourselves of excess.

The idea of the book is that you fast in seven different areas: food, clothes, spending, media, possessions, waste, and stress. Frankly, that last one on the list sounds like a great idea! So, this week the Blakely family is limiting their intake to just seven items of their choosing. They are halfway through a week of just bread, chicken, rice, avacado, peanut butter, apples, and salt. I may not have that exactly right, but you get the point. The first day into it I received a text from my grandson, Beau, who is 10: “NEED SUGAR!” His dessert that night had been a peanut butter sandwich!

They are really living out our verse for today! And Emmy has gained a genuine appreciation for the splendor of all of the wonderful foods that God has given us, along with the tastebuds to enjoy them! As Emmy said yesterday about God’s abundant provision: “He could have just given us sustenance. But instead he gave us French fries!” :)

I’m excited to watch them go through this process - although I think the media fast will be the most difficult. When Beau next hears at Sunday School the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert eating nothing but manna, I think he will understand in a way that many of his friends won’t.

We were actually studying that passage in Exodus in our women’s Bible study at church a couple of weeks ago. We were considering that God used manna to create a hunger in the Israelites for more of Him! Any time we fast from something for Him, it will give us a new vision of His character and His loving provision to meet all of our needs. And wouldn’t you rather have a dinner of herbs in a home filled with the love of the Lord than a prime rib feast in a house without Him?  


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