Categories B3RD

Food is a Gift from God

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What’s the first mention of food in Scripture?

If you guessed the forbidden fruit, you’ve got it wrong.

The first mention of food comes just after the creation of mankind–and before the account of the preparation of Eden for man.

“And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”
~Genesis 1:29-30 (ESV)

Now, some might look at this passage and start making rules. Since God says that He’s given mankind every green plant for food, that means that God’s intent for mankind is that they be vegetarian. What’s more, this Scripture prominently mentions the seed, which is an implicit condemnation of the genetic engineering that results in non-propagative species of plants…

Rules. We’re used to looking at food in terms of rules. The foods we should eat, the foods we shouldn’t. The way we should eat, the way we shouldn’t. The right way to buy, to cook, to eat food.

But to reduce this passage to rules is to miss the point of the first Scriptural mention of food.

Before God gave mankind rules about food, He gave them food itself.

Food is a gift from God.

This is so important, so central to a Christian understanding of food. Food is not an enemy to be fought against. Food is not a lover to be enchanted with. It is a gift to be thankful for.

In Genesis 9, just after God blesses Noah and his sons and repeats to them the creation mandate, He also repeats His gift of food. This time, it comes with an expansion.

“The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”
~Genesis 9:2-3 (ESV)

Just as God had given every plant to mankind for food, He now gives them every living creature.

Food is a gift from God.

The Lord taught us to pray in such a way as to remind us that food is a gift from God. How many times have you recited the familiar words of the Lord’s prayer without thinking of their implications.

“Give us this day our daily bread…”
~Matthew 6:11

We are dependent upon food for our physical sustenance–and it is God who gives us our food.

Food is a gift from God.

I can sense the discomfort some might have with this introduction to a theology of food.

How impractical, you may think.

Repeating a theological refrain.

What does that have to do with nutrition?

I would argue that it has everything to do with nutrition.

In the developed world (and perhaps elsewhere too), there are two prevailing attitudes towards food–attitudes that coexist despite their contradiction. We either see food as an enemy or as a lover or both. We love food for its flavor, for the comfort it provides, for how we feel when we’re eating. We hate food for what it does to our bodies, for what it cannot provide, for how we feel when we’re done eating.

The Biblical perspective on food provides the remedy to both of these unhealthy attitudes towards food.

While the glutton worships food, the Christian worships the God who has graciously given him food. While the dieter hates food and fights against it, the Christian receives it with thanksgiving to the one who has given it.

Food is a gift from God.

This is the beginning of a theology of food.

Categories Everyday Life

Playing Photographer

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If I were to grade my photography skills, I would have to say that I probably rank far below average (especially among the Mommy-blogger-digital-SLR-owning set).

Little Miss touches projector screen

My understanding of composition is average.

My understanding of lighting is something much less than average.

Little Miss on a treadmill

My understanding of my camera’s settings is virtually nonexistent.

Nevertheless, I spent my Memorial Day weekend getting myself out of the auto and program modes.

Little Miss Chews on a Finger

I had plenty of fodder–a piano recital Friday night, a graduation Saturday morning, graduation parties Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and a weenie-roast on Monday.

Little Miss Claps Her Hands

Oh, and the Little Miss.

Little Miss Crawling

She makes pretty decent camera fodder.

Little Miss looking at camera

I’ll keep playing photographer if it means spending time with her.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Diary of Pelly D” by L.J. Adlington

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Toni V is just another teen on the demolition crew, working his jackhammer. Day after day he tears up the ruins of City 5 to make way for the new city the general promises.

The rules and regulations say that everything that is found has to be reported. But when Toni V finds a water can with a diary inside, he defies the rules and regulations. He keeps and reads it: The Diary of Pelly D.

Pelly D lives in luxury in City 5. She’s rich, she’s pretty, and she leads the pack at school. Oh–and she has a holographic pool, which is pretty cool.

Pelly D is completely unconcerned about school work or about politics, or really about anything but her own pleasure and popularity–well, except for the little niggling doubts she has about the new gene stamping.

It’s an Atsumisi thing, this “Heritage Clan” thing. According to them, the world is divided into three groups: the haves and the have nots. The haves (Atsumisi and Mazzini) have the gene (even if it’s only turned “on” in the Atsumisi)–the have nots (the Galrezi) don’t.

It starts out innocently, people getting tattoos on their wrists to identify which gene clan they come from. But before long, Pelly D wonders if there might be discrimination on the planet (despite the colonials resolve to not even have a word for discrimination since they were so determined not to let any exist on their new planet.)

I’m not sure what to say about this book. The diary reads a little like Bridget Jones’ Diary (in other words, it’s awful). Reading Pelly D’s self-absorbed rants is painful. It’s a mercy that the author flashes back to Toni V every so often–he’s a breath of fresh air from the drama queen Pelly D.

At the same time, there’s something compelling about this novel. I can see how young adults might enjoy it. And–as far as young adult novels go, it’s relatively clean. There’s some allusions to making out and one not too descriptive sex scene. There’s a divorce that takes second stage to the real storyline. There’s some bullying, some definite rudeness. But it’s not like it’s celebrating deviant behavior.

And the ending. Oh, the ending.

I had to verbally process the entire plot with my little sister after I was done. It was that disturbing.

It was a good disturbing.

The kind that makes you think. The kind that makes you recall history, real events on Earth that resemble the events in the book. The kind that makes you question political correctness and what the world calls peace. The kind that makes you wonder how the evil in the heart of man can be eliminated.

The Diary of Pelly D is bad in that the diary itself is just the sort of thing you’d expect from a self-absorbed queen-of-the-brat-pack teen. The Diary of Pelly D is good in that the story sucks you in and gets you thinking (without you knowing that you’re thinking until you get to the awful, awful end.) It’s good in that the ideas it brings up stick with you, forcing you to grapple with reality.

I’m glad I read it. I’m not quite sure if I recommend it.

Rating:1 Star/5 Stars
Category:YA Dystopian Fiction
Synopsis:Toni V, a postapocalyptic teen, finds the diary of Pelly D–written before the war that ended the world as she knew it.
Recommendation: Decide for yourself. You can see how I had an awfully hard time even giving it stars–the one star is for the painfully insipid Pelly D’s diary writings, the five stars is for the completed effect of the novel.

Categories Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: Sleeping Stuff

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Thankful Thursday bannerI’ve learned that if I don’t get the sleep I need, my body takes the sleep I need–most frequently when I’m behind the wheel.

As a result, I’ve learned to listen to the warning signs telling m it’s time to pull over for a nap.

I take quite a few of those naps since I’m now commuting three days a week–and more often than not have an added weekend trip too.

This week, I’m thankful for…

…cell phone alarms I can set for 20 minutes

…a seat that reclines almost horizontal

…a little pillow that hangs out in my trunk (except when it hangs out in my back seat

…a warm blanket that eases the unexpected Thursday night chill

…a convenient commute for pull-off parking

There’s a little town about every 10-15 minutes along my usual commute from Columbus to Grand Island and back. Which means I’m usually close enough to make it to one of them. Once inside town, I can pull off on any number of parking lots (or even just along a side street) for my nap.

Of course, I’m also VERY thankful that I have a cozy bed with pillows and blankets (even an electric one-useful for when Anna needs AC upstairs but it makes it too cold for me downstairs :-P).

Sleep. It’s good.

I’m thankful God has given me the grace to sleep off the road rather than on it–thankful that I and the many other drivers on Highway 30 are alive (and unharmed).

Categories Theology

Sunday School in Review: Part 5

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For Ezekiel, we opened with a rousing chorus of “‘Dem Bones” before rushing through the “bones” of Ezekiel on our way to the main story for the day: The Valley of Dry Bones.

We read the story. We assembled a skeleton from paper bones. We talked about how God makes dead men live. I was dancing with the reality of hearts of stone becoming hearts of flesh–and can only hope and pray that the students caught the wonder of what God does when sinners become saints.

I wrote over my lesson for Daniel so I’m not entirely positive what I taught.

Actually, scratch that–it’s all coming back to me. We had a mini nutrition lesson and learned about the four Jewish boys who chose to be faithful to God and were rewarded. We learned about the three men who wouldn’t bow to an idol and who were rewarded with God’s presence among the fiery furnace. We learned about a man who wouldn’t let a foolish king’s law change his devotion towards God–and who was protected in the midst of a cage of lions. We learned that being obedient to God wasn’t always going to be easy–but that God would be with His children even in the midst of a foreign land, a fiery furnace, or a lion’s den.

Although I love Hosea, I was a little frightened to teach it to 2nd and 3rd graders–especially because the ESV (which I use) reads: “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

Yeah. I imagined parents beating down my door and beating in my head for teaching their children about whoredom.

I used the NIV that week, allowing the slightly more comfortable “adultery” (which I explained as “acting married with someone you aren’t married to”) to take the place of “whoredom”.

We learned how Gomer was like Israel and how Hosea was called to be like God. Gomer ran away from Hosea just like Israel ran away from God. Hosea stayed with Gomer (even though she ran away with other men) just like God stayed with Israel (even though they worshiped other gods.) Gomer committed adultery with other men, just like Israel committed idolatry with other gods. But Hosea bought Gomer back even when she was unfaithful–and God bough Israel back even when they were unfaithful.

We played hangman again (the kids got quite fond of this game)–and one little girl begged me not to erase the verse I’d chosen for our game until she could copy it down into her notebook: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” 2 Timothy 2:13

We switched gears suddenly by transitioning immediately from Hosea into Joel. Usually I try to connect the books we’re doing on the same day with some thematic element–but I couldn’t find or didn’t choose to elaborate on any theme between these two.

The kids colored a locust while I raced through my main points: Locust killed everything (yes, I brought in some Laura Ingalls Wilder here). This was God’s judgement for Israel’s sins. God promises to forgive His people when they repent. God will pour out His Spirit on all people and will save them. God will destroy His enemies and live with His people.

We looked back at the historical locust plague. We looked at the fulfillment of Joel 2 in Acts 2 (and I feared my Charismatic roots were showing as I quoted said passage from memory in the most excited of tones). We looked forward to the day when Christ comes back and completes the fulfillment of Joel by destroying His enemies and living with His people.

To be continued…

Categories B3RD

Introducing a Theology of Food

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Several of you commented positively when I suggested in jest that I might just have to write my own Christian nutrition reference. While I’m not sure a book of that sort is anywhere in my near future, I figured I might as well get a few of my thoughts into text–and give you all a sneak preview of what I might write about if I were to write a book on the topic!

Food plays an enormous role in our lives. Physically, it provides fuel for activity, essential nutrients for our body’s functioning, and a whole host of chemicals that either enhance or limit our body’s health. Psychologically, food offers comfort and is a repository of memories both good and bad. Socially, food provides the context for relationships, from school lunch rooms to church potlucks to awkward first dates at “fancy” chain restaurants. Developmentally, food plays an important role in the socialization of children to the norms of our cultures.

For most of humanity’s history, food was a matter of life and death. Subsistence farming meant that most of the world’s population was in a constant state of what today’s nutrition experts call “food insecurity”–not knowing where the next meal would come from (or whether it would come). Humans saw food from a survival standpoint.

In the past one hundred years, the sciences of agriculture and nutrition have grown in leaps and bounds. Food became abundant and readily available to most, at least in the developed world. Dozens of essential nutrients have been discovered and analyzed, multitudes of studies have explored the health impacts of the food we consume. We have come to see food from a health standpoint.

More recently, consumers have looked at the explosive growth of the agriculture industry and have called some of its tenets into question. They have started the local foods movement, the organic foods movement, the sustainable agriculture movements, the humane meat movement, and a dozen other movements looking at food from economic and/or ecological standpoints.

Christians, of course, acknowledge the broad array of standpoints by which to evaluate food–but many find themselves confused as to exactly what they should be thinking about food. How does Christianity influence what they eat and don’t eat? Does Christianity influence what they eat or don’t eat? Is the health aspect most important for Christians? Should Christians see food as fuel, nothing more? Should Christians be most concerned about sustainability or justice in distribution or taboo foods?

Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and statesman, once said:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”

Most Christians would agree that food, which touches so many square inches in the domain of our human existence, is no exception.

My experience, however, has been that most Christians have a vague sense that their Christianity should influence their view of food–but they don’t really have any idea how their Christianity should influence their view of food.

They’ve heard so many different things about food from so many different sources that many of them just throw up their hands and resign themselves to a vague feeling of guilt that they’re probably not thinking about food as they ought.

So what does God have to say about food? How should the Christian view food?

Come along with me over the next several weeks as I explore a theology of food.

I anticipate posting about once a week in this ongoing series, “A Theology of Food”. Depending on how things turn out, I may decide to make posting about food and nutrition issues a regular feature on bekahcubed. I appreciate your feedback along the way!

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

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Reading to Know - Book ClubIt seems whenever I told someone I was reading Tom Sawyer, they responded with the question “You’re re-reading it, right?”

It seemed inconceivable to all my friends that someone as fond of reading as I would have not read Tom Sawyer. But I had to respond that I honestly did not know whether I had read Tom Sawyer before.

I knew bits and pieces, recognized the names of Tom and Huck and Becky and Injun Joe. I knew the story about whitewashing the fence (of course) and vaguely recollected the island and the cave sequences. Maybe I’d read it before-or maybe I’d picked those details up from other reading I’d done.

Now, having read Tom Sawyer, I think I can confidently assert that before this last month, I had not read Tom Sawyer (except maybe in a highly abridged children’s version.)

Now that I have read Tom Sawyer, I can say that I enjoyed reading it (Thanks, Amy, for picking it for this month’s “Reading to Know Book Club“).

Twain’s descriptions of Sawyer’s childhood brought back fond memories of long hours spent outside with minimal supervision, of brothers and cousins digging pits to who-knows-where, of “adventurous” overnights that sometimes included fire and other times included water (and on the very rare occasion involved both.)

On the other hand, certain elements of Tom’s childhood bear no resemblance whatsoever to my own. I never uttered incantations or signed my name in blood. I never ran away from home or uncovered grave robbers. I never witnessed a murder (thank God!)

I think that before I started this book (and even into the first several chapters), I expected it to be merely a collection of anecdotes with little by way of a unifying story line. I’m glad that did not turn out to be the case–for if it had, I think I would have set down the book in disgust.

Tom is such an awful little creature. He never thinks of anyone except himself and his own pleasure. He is rude, mean, conniving, and thoughtless all at once. Yes, he may have rare moments of kindness (like when he took Becky Thatcher’s beating), but these are few and far between–and one can’t in good conscience say that his misdeeds were simply carelessness and that he had a good heart behind them. No, Tom is a selfish, horrid beast of a boy. He is amusing, but he is bad.

If I had merely been expected to laugh at and enjoy Tom’s antics, I’d have despaired. But Tom Sawyer does have more of a plot than that. Because of that plot, in which Tom Sawyer is scared into being rather a better boy than he would have otherwise been, the book is redeemable and the antics become enjoyable.

I’m definitely thinking I should be reading more Twain. He’s proven by Tom Sawyer that he’s capable of writing engaging fiction–although his apparent enjoyment of Tom’s wickedness makes me wonder if the author is always so morally ambivalent. I think I’m going to reserve judgment for now and wait until I’ve read some more.

Rating:3 Stars
Category:Juvenile Clasic
Synopsis:Tom is a rascally pre-teen who finds himself in over his head when he and a friend witness the murder of the town doctor.
Recommendation: Good story, but the moral ambiguity inclines me to not recommend it for the very young or morally suggestible. I’d read it with a middle-schooler, perhaps, but I’m not sure I’d suggest that they read it on their own.

Check out this Reading to Know Bookclub post to see what other readers are saying about this book.

Categories Faith

Freedom, Cliches, and Christ

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“Freedom isn’t free.”

The phrase has been running through my brain in these days leading up to Memorial Day.

I remember the first time someone thanked me (me!) for the sacrifices I’d made for freedom.

Me? Sacrifice for freedom?

Of course, said they. You’ve given your brothers to the cause of freedom.

Except that I haven’t really. Not much.

Both my brothers (and my sister-in-law) are proud living Marines. The price we’ve paid is small.

All three of my sibling Marines have all their body parts. The price we’ve paid is small.

Yes, their choice to volunteer in the USMC has meant that I missed my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding. It has meant that John and Kaytee will be stationed far from me. It has meant some discomfort to me. But it is a very small price.

Don’t thank me. I have hardly paid.

John, Kaytee, and Tim have paid more. They have given up a modicum of their own freedom, have submitted themselves to be at the beck and call of the USMC. They do not choose where they will go or what they will be. They do not choose how many push-ups they will do or how fast they will run. The USMC says and they must do.

Even so, their sacrifices pale in the light of many others who have gone before.

Veterans of past wars have come home scarred mentally and physically. They fought, some willingly, some unwillingly for a cause some believed in and others did not. Sometimes they won and sometimes they lost. Sometimes the world was freer for their contributions, sometimes it was not. Yet they fought, they sacrificed to obtain or maintain freedom for others.

Men and women have fought and died for freedom, leaving behind their blood, their bodies, their brave deeds. They fought for a freedom they would not enjoy-freedom to live in peace in the United States, in Europe, in the Middle East. They fought against regimes that did not topple in their lifetimes, lifetimes cut short by war. They never saw the end of the central powers, of Nazi Germany, of Soviet Communism.

They paid everything they had.

Yet even their sacrifice pales in light of a great sacrifice.

Freedom isn’t free. Jesus paid a high price for it.

A soldier subjects himself to humiliation by drill instructors, by foreign enemies, by insensitive and misunderstanding brutes at home. Christ subjected himself to humiliation by becoming a part of His creation. He subjected Himself to the humiliation of being mocked by the very ones He had given life, the ones whose life He currently sustained.

A soldier is conscripted or volunteers, knowing that death is possible. Jesus volunteered, knowing that death was inevitable, necessary.

A soldier may bear the wrath of a peeved higher officer, of an angry enemy combatant, of a rabid anti-war activist. Christ bore the wrath of His own righteous Father.

Freedom isn’t free.

Jesus paid for it. He paid a price we could never pay.

I wonder, as these thoughts run through my head, if I’m not cheapening the sacrifice of our soldiers, not reducing the impact of our fallen veterans. Am I trivializing all that Memorial Day is about? I am, after all, making light of the physical sacrifices of our soldiers by comparing them with the huge sacrifice of my Savior.

But no, I realize. If anything, I make light of Christ by comparing His sacrifice with that of a soldier.

How can I thank a veteran today? How can I remember the mere men who fought for freedom?

I can thank my veterans by telling them of the freedom that transcends politics. I can remember those who fought by glorifying the one who Won.

Because he who the Son sets free is free indeed.

May I fight, may I sacrifice, may I live and die that His Sacrifice be remembered.

Categories Theology

Sunday School in Review: Part 4

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I taught Isaiah the week before Christmas–and chose to branch off on my own. I still used the “official” worksheet some, but I made my own worksheet for what I really wanted to emphasize: Jesus.

Who is Jesus in Isaiah? I asked.

We learned about the Son of a virgin, of Immanuel which means “God with us”. We learned that He is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We read of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the precious cornerstone. We learned about God’s servant, a man of sorrows who was like a sheep led to the slaughter.

We studied Jesus–and my teaching heart began to sing again.

My first lesson of the new year, we played hangman to start the class.

“Sovereign:” our hangman read. “ruler, one who is in control.”

I handed out clay to each student, and read Jeremiah 1:4-10. We talked about how God had planned in advance what Jeremiah would be and do. We saw that God was sovereign in calling Jeremiah to ministry-and in accomplishing that ministry through Jeremiah.

We went to the potter’s house and saw a potter in complete control of the clay. We saw God as sovereign over nations being built and destroyed–just like the potter was in complete control of the clay.

We looked at the prophecies of Jeremiah and saw them as evidence of God’s sovereignty. They came true not just because God knew the future, but because He controls the future.

We talked about the implications of God’s sovereignty. We talked about how this is terrifying to people who don’t know Jesus and who are disobedient to God. God is in control and they have made themselves His enemy. We talked about how people who trust in Jesus can be comforted by and confident in God’s sovereignty. We talked about how God has already said what He’s making out of believers’ lives–about how He’s making them so they look like Jesus.

We didn’t have a worksheet this week. I knew what I wanted to teach and I wasn’t willing to let any piece of paper from the curriculum dilute the teaching.

It felt good, freeing, to be teaching meat instead of pablum.

To be continued…

Categories Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: Attitude Adjustment

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Thankful Thursday bannerMaybe you haven’t recognized it from my blogging–or maybe you have–but I’ve needed an attitude adjustment for a good long while.

I’ve been busy at work and stressed and… I’ve been making excuses for having a downright rotten attitude.

I’ve dwelt on the worst in every situation, only bothering to be thankful when I sit down for my Thursday posts. I’ve whined and complained about my circumstances–and only given thanks despite my circumstances, rarely in my circumstances.

Then, by the grace of God, I received a review copy of Sarah Francis Martin’s Stress Point: Thriving Through Your 20s in a Decade of Drama. I started in on “Stress Point 1: Career”. And I read:

“By worshiping Him in our job situations, whether or not the circumstances are ideal, we run smack dab into happiness, blessings, and fulfillment. Dissatisfaction in our jobs is enveloped and overriden by insatiable satisfaction in El Elyon–our one and only Wish.”
~from page 18 of Stress Point

The author gives some tips for maintaining balance with regard to your career. None of them were particular earth-shattering, but the overall reminder was wonderful.

I needed an attitude adjustment-at work and in life.

This week, I’m thankful…

…for God speaking to me through this book

…for restful times of prayer during my commute

…for the ability to pray throughout the day

…that I can choose how I respond to circumstances

…for the truth of the Word of God which says:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything through prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God–and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.”
~Philippians 4:6-7

It’s amazing how the simple acts of surrendering in prayer and worshiping in work produce peace amidst chaos.

Have I had a less crazy week? Not necessarily. But I have certainly had a less stressful week. Because when my attitude is in line with Christ, my burden is light.