Eating Right

Luke 22:19 And he took bread… and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

I am what I eat and frankly, I eat too much junk.  It is not that I do not know what I am supposed to eat.  I just prefer to consume unhealthy food and I prefer it in great quantities.  In theory, I want to eat right, I just have an appetite for the wrong.

My spiritual life is not dissimilar.  I want God and I want to live the spirit-filled life He intends.  I just do not fill myself with him as I should.  I desire the spiritual equivalent of junk food.  Some pursuits are obviously evil, but not all are.  I can be distracted from God by family, work or even exercise.  If I spend more time at the gym than I do with God, I may be doing it wrong.

In today’s passage, we are told of the first communion.  Celebrating the Passover meal, Jesus told his disciples that the bread they ate was symbolic of his body which would be broken for them.  Just as they consumed bread for their physical sustenance, they were to consume Christ for their spiritual sustenance.

I sometimes wonder if we do communion wrong.  In another record of the same event, Jesus said, Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:25).  I think that perhaps our ritual of prayer before every meal is closer to Jesus’ intent.  As often as we eat or drink, we are to remember that as we feed ourselves physically with bread, we are to feed ourselves spiritually with Christ.

Drawing a parallel between physical sustenance and spiritual sustenance, Jesus was telling me how to stay in communion with him.  The truth is, I struggle to stay connected to God all day.  Though I get up and fill myself for the first hour of the day with God, I later forget to do so.  Incidentally, I never forget to eat.  Though I am often too busy for God, I am never too busy for food.

This is what Jesus was saying: As often as I fill myself with food, I am to fill myself with God.  If I worked out as often as I ate, I would eat less and be in better physical shape.  Similarly, if I filled myself with God as often as I filled myself with food, I would be in much better spiritual shape.

As our physical health can improve or decline, our spiritual health can do the same.  Just as we can eat right and exercise to improve physically, we can condition ourselves spiritually (1 Timothy 4:8).  I am that which I consume and I can consume a little God or a lot of God.

In the act of communion, I find a practical way to stay connected with God all day.  As often as I eat or drink, I can remember how I am sustained spiritually by consuming Christ.  Through the practice of communion, I can choose to continually fill myself with him.

The Seeds of the Spirit is a daily blog based on a walk through the New Testament.  Written from the perspective of my own addiction, it explores the common defects of our flesh nature and the solution, our spirit life.  If you find it helpful, sign up for the blog as a daily email, tell your friends and like/share it on Facebook.