What Our Plates Teach Us About Our Faith

Everyone understands food, which is what makes it such an honest teacher. We all know what happens when we eat too much and move too little; the body grows heavy, the mind grows foggy, and nourishment that should have become strength simply sits there unused. We also know what happens when we push the body hard without feeding it; energy collapses, focus scatters, and the harder we work, the less we accomplish. Health is never found at either extreme. It lives in the rhythm between receiving and expending.

Faith operates the same way, because one of the core features of being human is polarity. We are naturally drawn toward extremes; indulgence pulls us to one side, obsession and striving pull us to the other. Both draw us away from center, and both numb the mind, but in different ways.

Consider what this looks like in the life of faith. A faith that only takes in, through teaching, comfort, and blessing, but never expresses itself through action becomes like the heavy meal that never gets worked off. Food is meant to become energy and movement; when it never does, it simply weighs the body down. In the same way, truth we receive but never put into practice does not strengthen us; it sits within us unused, and we grow spiritually sluggish.

Likewise, a life of constant doing that never pauses to receive becomes like training without eating. Food is what gives the body its strength to work in the first place; take it away, and the body runs on empty, growing weaker the harder it pushes. The same is true of faith. When we serve and labor without ever stopping to be fed through prayer, rest, and time in God's presence, our own effort becomes the center of our attention. We begin to place too much weight on our actions; success feeds the ego, material things take on more importance than they deserve, and the spirit within us goes hungry and forgotten. The work may continue, but the joy drains out of it, and slowly we lose sight of the very God we are serving and forget the reason we began.

Jesus names both of these dangers in a single sentence:

The word "surfeiting" refers to the sickness that follows overindulgence, while "cares of this life" describes the anxious, overworking mind. In other words, overindulging and overstriving; both leave the heart "overcharged." Either way, the presence of God becomes harder to perceive; not because it left, but because we numbed the instrument that perceives it.

The alternative is steadiness. Rather than swinging between extremes, we learn to remain the same in every condition; humble in failure, humble in success. A steady heart stays light, and a light heart stays awake.

Notice that Jesus opens his warning with the words "take heed to yourselves." Caring for the heart is much like caring for the body; we watch what we take in, we watch what we pour out, and we keep the two in rhythm. It is the same lesson our plates teach us every day. Balance is not a compromise between God and the world; it is the condition that allows the Lord to dwell within us.