You are what you eat

“Can I eat this mom? It doesn’t say if it is gluten-free? Do you think it is ok?” My little guy stares at this package of snacks and tries to determine if he is going to trust it. He shakes it, reads the ingredient list again and then discards it on the table opting for an apple instead. “This,” he announces to the entire kitchen, “is definitely gluten-free. It has never failed me!” And he punctuates his declaration with a loud crunchy bite.

Two of my boys have Celiac Disease. And if you know anything about this auto-immune disease, then you know that the only way to avoid its symptoms is to eat a strict gluten-free diet. My oldest was diagnosed nearly 16 years ago before the word gluten had entered our vocabulary. Feeding him in those days required either making everything from scratch or spending hours on the phone trying to determine the truth about what really is in that bag of chips. Since then, things have changed a bit. Gluten-free has become the newest dieting fad and labeling has improved.

But. I have instilled in my boys the need to be discerning about what they are putting in their mouths. Just because something looks like it might be gluten-free doesn’t mean it is.  And sometimes they find this out the hard way. Our little guy was only diagnosed about 3 years ago and recently he accidentally ate something without reading the label.

And he cannot forget how sick he was. It looked gluten-free, but it wasn’t. And now, it’s hard to know what to trust. Except for apples. You can always trust apples, right? And it’s a good life lesson. Knowing what to trust can be hard, can’t it? And not just for a hungry nine-year-old boy.

These words of Scripture are scribbled on a card beside my desk. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23). I read them, but the day pushes hard against me with its people and its problems. Those are good words, but in this season and in this place, I find myself needing words that do more than just sound good. I need to know that they are true. And I need to know what to do with them.

In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, there is this verse that reminds me what God actually intends for us to do with his Book full of good words. “When your words came to me, I ate them. They were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name O Lord God Almighty.” (Jeremiah 15:16).

I put this verse on our kitchen chalkboard and my kids cannot stop laughing. They think the idea of eating words is ridiculous. But. I think it might be the way God intends for us to survive.

Scripture isn’t meant to simply be sweet sayings we repeat to each other when life goes sideways. It is meant to be the substance of our life. And it cannot sustain us if it cannot get in us.

When my oldest was first diagnosed with Celiac, he was a year old. I spent days reading about this disease, scouring labels, throwing away old pots that were contaminated with wheat products and talking to other folks who had navigated this path. He was so little and so sick that he couldn’t tolerate much more than just a bottle of milk. So I read about food. But I didn’t actually have to feed him.

And then came the day when he felt better. “I eat, Mama?” he asked pointing to our cupboard. And I panicked. I had to decide what to feed him. What was safe for his body? I had to take all of that knowledge I had acquired and put it in him. Reading about gluten-free food wasn’t going to keep him alive; eating it was.

“Your words came to me and I ate them” (Jeremiah 15:16).

The truth is this.  If we want to see God at work in our lives, we have to trust him enough to let him get inside it all.

It is one thing for my Celiac kids to read that something is gluten-free and another thing entirely for them to trust it enough to put it in their mouths.

“Your words came to me and I ate them” (Jeremiah 15:16).

Eugene Peterson puts it like this in his book Eat This Book, “Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives. Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God it must be internalized. (Peterson 20).

When life comes along and knocks us over, what’s inside of us will be what spills out. The annoying neighbor, the kid that won’t listen, the discussion that points to our faults? These parts of life will all get covered by what’s inside of us. I hear my voice go short, feel my temper flare and know well the pull to always be the one who’s right.

We are what we eat. And like my kids who will spend their lives discerning what is safe and what isn’t, we must learn to be careful about what makes its way inside of us.

“If we want a text to live by that keeps us in the company of God’s people, keeps us conversant with who he is and the way that he works, we simply must learn to… eat his [words]” (Peterson). We have to learn to come to the Bible like we come to a table. Hungry. We have to let the words get inside of us; letter by letter, sentence by sentence; story by story they will fill up our emptiness. Our Creator’s words becoming “our joy and our delight”; our hearts learning what it means to bear his name and our souls being satisfied by what is true.

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23).