what the food gospel leads us to- it promises feast and feed us condemnation

It had been one of those talkings that leaves you soul tired.

Bold and confident, she spoke and words fell and tears followed and my fumbling words met her fears and late into the night these things collided and hearts lay open between us, and grace was the only seasoning that made this palatable.

The bold and confident had let me peek into her heart space and she had told me how there was rarely a time that she felt comfortable in the space her skin occupied.

She told me how the walking into buildings was plagued by comparing and looking into the mirror was combat and food was the enemy. There constantly wars in her mind: lies about beauty and eating and exercising and judgment from people that watch her.

She told me condemnation replaced comfort and there was this wedding in her mind of discipline and condemnation. That to be disciplined she would condemn the cake eating, the scale standing, the slow running.

And there, there it was, and hadn't I felt it too.

Condemnation.


And isn't that what fake gospels always lead us to, what the food gospel leads us to- it promises feast and feed us condemnation and we are famished for grace and hope but aren't our souls stuffed with starvation so there is no room for the bread of life. And we will live consumed by the famine of the food gospel.

The Gospel though, it tells us something different about this whole food thing, this whole weight thing, the comparing and condemning.

It tells us that in the beginning there was a garden, full of the satisfying. Satan took woman and showed her the fruit, the fruit that was not to be eating. Even here in this with-holding there was satisfying, but she did not believe that the Feast Maker was good and had provided everything she needed to be satisfied. She ate the lie the serpent fed her and she swallowed arrogance and fed it to her love.

The Feast Maker his heart was broken.

Death came to hunt the fallen, hunt us, death came to consume, and death had every right to do it.

But he, Feast Maker, he already had a plan, a recipe to to restore the rebel and he would do it.

He sent his son to eat with the fallen, the sinner, the condemned.

His only son. Imagine, the God man sitting on the dirt he had created filling his stomach with grain and wine he caused grow, filling the stomach his own hands had crafted. He ate with the despised, the forgotten, the marginalized, the important, the religious, the rebel, the trader, the tactical. He ate with them, and I can't get over this.

But this eating came to a climax when he ate the passover and went to the cross to drink the cup of condemnation that you and I had pressed like wine beneath our foot-stomping-tantrum-throwing feet.

He- the Eternal Warrior- took the fatal wounding and hung head on wooden cross.

His head hanging became head spinning when he came to the room his fearful disciples had retreated to and he ate with them. Of all the things the rising, victoring Warrior could of done when he found his hand picked warriors hiding, cowering- he ate with them.

But he didn't stay at the dinner party- he left the earth and he sent his Comforter. The Comforter reminds me that one day I'll join the Feast Maker and the Eternal Warrior for a meal. A wedding feast where he will declare to angels and all watching and worshipping that I am his bride, the bride he spilled blood for and drank wrath for and satisfies with a love so sweet and palatable that satisfies my souls deepest craving.

This Feast Maker, he reminds me that here we're doing this kingdom building work. And he reminds me that eating it is some how kingdom building and resting on the couch and attempting a "couch to 5k" and eating cake to celebrate and late night heart sharings and looking at me in the mirror and suprise visits from besties celebrated with icecream before dinner and after all of these things are kingdom building moments.

He reminds me that my gospel is not about a number on a tag but about the glory of him who would number my hairs. He reminds me that it is not my success in waking early to pound miles of black pavement but that he has succeeded in his pursuit to make me his bride. He tells me, and I am almost breathless, that it is not success that brings satisfaction but it is the fact that he is satisfied to call me his inheritance.

And these are the things that come to me now.

But that night, I fumbled for words about how Papa views her and has remade her and that he hand crafted her curves and limbs and features. But I couldn't make anything come out right. So we stopped our word fumbling and we sat at the feet of the Feast Maker and we began to beg for bread.

Laying, back to blue and brown comforter, we talked to Papa about these things.

There was truth that salted her words, truth about the way she is viewed. Truth about the way she views herself. A dependent heart cry to change the seeing. Truth that this was not about food or running or sitting or a number put on a tag or dimpled legs or chiseled abs or petite features, or self discipline this was about gospel belief. This was about how to swallow grace, to digest it and be satisfied in it. 

We reminded him and each other the truth that God humbled him self and only once in history did the lamb sit at the Passover table as lamb lay on the Passover table. Why? So that we the enemy now feast at his table as a friend. And we say it in hushed tones knowing only he can cause this to sink into a soul starving to be satisfied with the truth. The truth that there are names our flesh whispers when mirrors reflect, but he has renamed. The truth that once we were condemned but now we are covered in his righteousness. The truth that we are not made to win accolades or attention for our beauty but parade, point to the unfading beauty of the gospel. The truth that the only way to palate and swallow the hard in life is by seasoning it with grace. The truth that food will not comfort like the Comforter or satisfy the soul deep cravings. The truth that the ingrained food gospel doesn't win, won't always win because only Jesus wins. Only Jesus wins. The truth that I am his and he is mine. And this is satifying. The truth that we the broken became the beloved because the bread of life- the breath of life- gave himself to taste death. 

a visit from her....

Celebrated with ice cream....

and dinner 

and sweet Jesus truth 

Four things for the stuck, the over thinkers, the rethinkers

Drop after drop poured from overcast sky.

Streams cut the once patchy lawn into canals running red from southern clay. They flowed like veins red, pulsing down the incline. I watched single drops ban together to cut deeper and deeper into the yard.

Mamma ducks stood with babies as if this was how it was meant to be, as if water pouring uncontrollable from dark sky, cutting rock hard earth was nothing to worry about. 

Hadn't she told me this?  

Hadn't she told me that the pouring of thoughts creates cutting of paths.

Sitting in her side sun room, I stretched ankles out on thick tan carpet as we listened and chatted and laughed and she told me about the creating of canals in our minds. 

Every thought we think creates a path in our mind, some paths are walked again and again and are deepened each time we walk down them. 

Others are forgotten and over grown because of under travel. 

"Every thought"

She said 

"Creates a chemical reaction"

Encouraged to create new trenches, I left her. 

That night I lay in bed thinking of the image I had seen, and the fear it crept into the tossing and I turned the other way only to meet face to face with anxiety and I tried sipping water and gulping for air and kicking off sheets and curling up toes. 

Drop by drop thoughts fell and cut deeper the passage way, years old,  in my brain, over and over in my head, filling the channel, deepening it. 

I could feel the failure the fearing the water logging happening laying in darkness. 

Tip toeing socked foot in front of bare foot stepping out on back porch, I picking up the words that I could see that reveal things I can't yet. And I asked for Anna eyes. 

"Yes" 

I breath out a breath that seems to have been held all day. 

"Papa, Anna eyes, please." 

Eyes like the woman, the one who had stood in the temple she saw him.The Messiah.

Not the Christ like we see him, not the God man that healed the diseased, freed the demon oppressed,

stumped the teachers, stretched, staying on a tree to give his spirit up to we could be given his spirit.

No, this woman, this Anna, she saw a boy. A Jewish boy with parents and siblings, brown eyes, sun

kissed skin, boy hands and a poor man's sacrifice. 

And how many people passed this Jewish boy that day? 

How many pushed passed him, the lamb of God, to bring their lambs to God. 

But Anna. 

She saw. 

And I saw red words on white paper- the praying to Papa, 

"do it without a heart to be seen.And he,the seeing father, sees and knows."

The treasuring- 

"Look" at the birds 

"See" the lilies 

"Seek" the kingdom 

And this is where I ask for Anna eyes- sitting watching veins cut red into the earth.

Jim Elliot he said it

"Where ever you are be all there." 

How many nights had, have, do I lay in darkness replaying the moments; the hurting ones, the failing

ones, the wasted ones, replaying, replaying, reliving, deepening. 

How many times I miss seeing what is in the moment for fear of wasting or messing up or regretting.

How often I'm too tired to see what is in the now because the next is always being thought of, chewed

over, thought through. 

And I sit feeling it will always be this way, watching the water deepen the earth, always channeling

into the channels that already were, never creating new ones. 

Repetion winning each drop. 

I watch the water and think it "No path deepened by repetition is deeper or more powerful than love

proven by resurrection." 

And freedom. 

Truth. 

I see that path and I take Papa's hand and we walk it.  

One particularly agitated duckling waddles as fast as his orange webbed feet would go to the edge of

the grass. Out loud I say it 

"You know who that is don't you?" 

I smile, smile embarrassingly silly. Thinking of him the infinite, knowing, interacting with the finite. 

"And you are the one who dresses that oak tree." 

And there's this looking that starts happening. 

"You're the one who dressed the wheat that's baking in my oven, and you're the one who came up

with the idea of rain factories in the sky. "

I chuckle

"Storing water in the sky, oh man that was a good one."  

And there's this giddiness that comes out as I look and speak and think and deepen the living in this

moment. 

"But dad, what about seeing the hard things?' 

Walking inside to take sticky cinnamon rolls out of the oven thinking this one thing, stops me and I can

feel the pull down stream to merge with the already existing river of thought. 

But, he reminds me- no tragedy creates a trench he has not already been in. No moment creates a

problem outside of his providence. There is no tear washed face he is not near to. For his children no

shame, no sin carried that his body has not felt the weight of. 

The glass mason jar filled to it's brim sits on the railing and I think of the Spirit that's filling me. The

spirit that brought life, and hope and full filled promises, raised the Messiah to life, strengthened him to

die. 

He is in me. 

The water of life is creating new mind rivers. 

Setting tin pan to hot pad I watch thick white icing melt into each crevice and canal and think of it all

and this moment and the time it will take to choose new brain paths. And starting here. Now. And that I

will only ever have to choose the now to do this seeing, thinking, canal carving thing. 

Breathing out, I smile and breath out again and again and again thinking of the one who gives each breath.
Choosing how many we have.