30
Jul '20
All Who Are Hungry, All Who Are Thirsty
30
Jul '20
When I say I love food, I mean I LOVE food in the way that it’s the highlight of my day. It’s always been there for me. Ice cream and chocolate consoled broken hearts, thick and spicy gumbo warmed the family up in the winter – and any time of the year if we’re being honest, and BBQ grilling is my all time favorite type of gathering because there’s always a lot of laughing and singing and even some alcohol-induced dancing.
Fasting is a regular topic in Scripture, and I know a lot of friends that practice this mode of discipline and worship on a regular basis. I can usually get away with it for Yom Kippur, but fasting outside of that sounds more like a death sentence to me than anything else. I’ve tried it a few other times but would always forget or cave and eventually just stopped trying, even though I kept feeling the strings tugging at me to keep trying.
Suddenly, I didn’t have a choice in eating anymore. My wide range of taste got cut significantly to become no meat. Not long after, all forms of potatoes or chips, rice, even pasta got cut off the list. I just kept choking on everything and eventually had to stop taking the risk of really getting sick or injured. I was down to protein shakes for the sake of getting some honest to goodness nutrients.
This lasted about a month.
It didn’t take long before drinks got hard to swallow. I started choking on them too and was forced to stop drinking anything for a few days because I absolutely couldn’t risk getting pneumonia at a time like this, with COVID, and unable to take any medicine for it which would send me straight to a hospital bed with an IV.
Life goes on though, and I was around others that of course got to keep on eating and drinking. We had loads of food in our fridge, gallons of water because I’m accustomed to drinking a gallon a day… and I couldn’t have any of it. Not even in the blistering heat of a Louisiana summer. I would see others chug down a cold bottle of water, and all I could feel was the aching pain of my dry and sore throat. Getting to smell all of the delicious food was enough to make my stomach turn from hunger pains to the point that I thought it might shrivel into nothing.
If you’ve ever heard the term, “hangry” I was the living version of it sprinkled with the emotions of a pregnant lady PMSing all at the same time. When you’re that desperate for nourishment, you can’t sleep. You’re weak and can’t carry anything you’re used to carrying and walking pretty much guarantees getting lightheaded. Don’t even get me started with what kind of stress that brings with it.
When Yeshua starts talking about those that hunger and thirst, I personally have an idea of the kind of hunger and thirst of someone that has been in a dry, hot place with nothing to their name.
That’s the kind of do-or-die, single minded need we should feel when we seek Him. The pain in the pit of our stomach, the desperate craving for a drink. Seeking and longing for that connection as if desperate for living nourishment. We can’t live to eat and drink, but our lives can be a testament to how that nourishment of a relationship with Him is helping us to grow and flourish as a Believer created in His image.
You can only get there though by creating a lifestyle that consistently carves out time to be with Him. What better time than when you’re enjoying your meals throughout the day?
