Low on the Go!

on cereal and other things.

you know you should eat healthy. based on this knowledge, you will choose one breakfast food--let's say, cereal-- over a myriad of other potentially good choices, say, maple smoked bacon and eggs. within your choice of cereal you can choose something like count chocula, which, realistically means that you could have eaten maple smoked bacon and eggs, because let's be honest, the calorie content is probably quite equal. or, you could choose wheaties, because they're marginally tasty and good for you. the calorie content is probably vastly low in comparison to either of the former choices, and hey, flush out those bowels while you're at it.

so you wake up in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, make your clothing choice, eat your wheaties and so forth. the novelty of wheaties is sure to wear off after the first day. after all, they are wheaties. so the next day, you wake up in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, make your clothing choice, eat your wheaties and run out the door. you have good bowel movements.
but the novel has long since become the mundane, and it needs to become a conscious choice to keep on eating those wheaties. you may choose to do this for a variety of reasons. richard simmons has perhaps been emailing you since the 80s beseeching you to eat your wheaties. obedience. or maybe they've what you've been eating since the 80s. tradition and habit. or you know it's good for you and you know that it is the best possible thing for you to eat and will yield the best results. conviction stemming from choice. with this latter choice, you can rejoice because you know that the mundane will not come back with nothing. you can fix your eyes by faith knowing that though you cannot see immediate wheatie-eating results, the certainty of the hope set before you is reason enough to keep on eating wheaties rather than fruit loops.

someone recently told me that i'm really hard to get to know, and that i'm a really closed person. at first, i was inclined to disbelief, because i used to be a pretty open person. i used to share life readily and easily. i used to cry without excuse.

upon reflection, i realized that that person was right.
i talked to another person today and realized that i'm not fully engaged with anyone anymore. i'm not fully engaged with Jesus and i'm not fully engaged with others. i'm finding myself in a time of restlessness. i eat my wheaties because i know they are good things, but i'm unwilling to take things a step further, to savouring the wheaties and enjoying their effects, because i'm constantly dreaming of a better cereal to eat.

i do a lot of things out of tradition and out of obedience. but i'm slowly realizing that this isn't enough to sustain life. the pharisees did a lot of things out of tradition and obedience. i'm sure they probably ate some derivation of wheaties for breakfast. but they lacked faith to make the leap from obedience to an engaging attitude with God.

my life is marked by a lack of understanding about grace and faith. i live it in the mundane, obeying, because i know i should. because i don't want to let people down. because i don't want to let God down. because i'm fearful that if i don't, i'll fall away instantly. but doing things just because i should and living life in the mundane isn't cutting it anymore.

i don't just need to eat the wheaties out of obedience. i need to eat them by faith.