one word..

Truth.


My friend Jessica and I just had the best *nonfamily* conversation I've had All month!
She shared her blog post with me. I really needed to hear this -- and know that there is a reason that it is NOT okay for me to "indulge" myself in senseless "junk", that i so knowingly, and WILLINGLY allow into my life, and I CHOOSE This over God's truth?!~

like -- WHAT THE HECK!?~

"You and I are at the banquet table of God's presence and truth, but too often we are so full of junk that we're not hungry. In actuality, spiritually, we are starving to death. We have settled for garbage instead of feasting on the nourishment God richly provides."

In Calcutta, their is a ministry called the House of the Dying. This ministry brings dying people off the street. "Their goals was not to cure these people. It was to give them a dignified place to die." In Calcutta, "70% of the homeless population have lung disease of tuberculosis. When you walk down the street, you find thousands of people coughing up their lungs... Upon arrival, their heads were shaved, and they were given a shower and a bowl of hot food... then replaced their ragged, soiled clothes with clean ones... Lepers came in with their flesh rotting and their nose, fingers, and toes missing... [the ministers] washed these lepers' skin and gave them clean clothes to wear. The job of one of the workers was to stick a syringe into their pus-filled sores and extract the poisonous disease. Each syringe was used for person after person and day after day until it was too dull to pierce the skin. Then it was thrown into the garbage can [containing the soiled clothes, the shaven hair, the jars with coughed up lungs, the uneaten food]."

Taking out the garbage was a heart wrenching task. "The stench was almost unbearable. Can you imagine the disease, ragged clothing, and half-eaten food? I begged them not to ask me to do it. It haunted me forever the first time I took out the garbage. As soon as we walked out the back door toward the dump, children came out of the alleyes and ripped open the bags to get whatever was there. I yelled, 'Don't eat this garbage! It's full of disease and death!' But they were so hungry that they ate the garbage because that was all they could find... I wept as I saw them scramble through the spilled jars of disease, the clothing stained with rotten flesh, and use syringes, trying to get scraps of last night's dinner that a dying person didn't eat."

Disturbing image, isn't it?! But in all honesty, how far are we from this spiritually? Can you see yourself feasting at the dumpster of this world? Many of us are like those kids scrambling for garbage. We elbow each other at the mall, at the theatre, in the back seat, at home , at work, on the net, and at school in our nhunger for food, but the doof we lunge and dight for is rotten and diesaesed - and we eat it. We eat it every time we fill our minds and hearts with sexually suggestive movies or music, every time we make fun of somebody for whom Christ died, every time we value the praise of people more than the praise of God, every time we live to revenge on someone who has hurt us, and every time we try to put things in God's place in our own hearts. We are so full of this junk that we aren't hungry for the food that really satisfies and nourishes."

When I put myself in the place of the man who saw the children rip the garbage open and feast on death, my heart sinks deep. These children are so hungry for garbage they are willing to bargain with death. When we, the children of God, grab onto this world because we are desperately thirsty, we are bargaining with death as well. That food the children eat will not nourish and satisfy, but poison and kill them... just the same way the worls will never satisfy. Only Christ can satisfy. St. Augustine once said, "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." This means that we need to selectively choose what we want to nourish our bodies.

The more junk I eat, the further I distance myself from the Father. But when I don't poison my body with junk, but feast on the fine, satisfying food of Christ I draw near to the Father."

Jeremiah 15:16
When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight,
for I bear your name,
O LORD God Almighty.

All quotes in this post that are not the Bible or followed by another person's name are from David Nasser's A Call to Die


One word --

Truth..