Just yesterday we returned from a looong trek out to our friends village to celebrate Chinese New Year. It was a wonderful time with people we love dearly, and we treasure the opportunities like these to step into Hani culture. The travel was challenging for me though as narrow, curvy mountain roads hardly agree with my stomach. I’ve always been prone to carsickness, but hours and hours of tiny roads had my seeing my lunch again on our first day of travel. Neither fun nor attractive. As I knew we would be travelling to different villages to visit our friend’s family I saw myself running to meet yet another mountainside, and decided that eating less would be my best option.
Now, I come from a long line of hearty eaters. I’ve always been one of those who could “forget” to eat about as easily as I could “forget” to breath. It just doesn’t work for me. But after day one of travel and our first few meals cooked in good ole’ mountaintop pig fat, I realized my options were hold back or see it brought back. Last night as I poured my weary bones into bed, nothing seemed right. My arm was sore and Baxter couldn’t rub it right, my back itched in a place I couldn’t reach, and my pillow was uncomfortably taller than I remembered. And then I realized what the problem was. I was hungry. And yet somehow over the previous few days I had learned to overlook this feeling out of fear for being carsick and embarrassing myself or my host. After leaping from bed and downing as many crackers and peanut butter as I possibly could I instantly felt better and returned to bed a lot more happy and a lot less whiney.
But as I laid back down, I realized how quickly my body had adjusted to this sub-par condition of health. Out of necessity I had exchanged what I knew to be right and good for what my situation demanded – eating as little as possible in order to not become sick, and subsequently my view on just about everything was shifted. I was deeply convicted of how this has been the situation of my soul these past few busy weeks. I couldn’t help but think about how I again and again have exchanged what is truly life-giving for what works for the moment. Rather than stilling my soul in the presence of God and be filled by all that He is, I have absorbed myself in the tasks of the day. Sure, this works to some degree, but in no way is how we are created to live. As I read this morning about Jesus identifying himself as the bread of life, I couldn’t help but think of Mary and Martha. Everyone knows that Jesus scolded Martha for being a busy-body and yet I think there is more to it. It clearly wasn’t just a situation of what they were about, but about the condition of their hearts. Mary chose Life, what Jesus called necessary and lasting. She chose to sit at the feet of the well that would never run dry and just soak in His presence. Martha chose what she perceived as important and set her heart to be about what was perhaps the most obvious and even demanding.
As I think about different frustrations or struggles in the past weeks, I see it not as a symptom of my circumstances, but rather of my starving heart. I praise God for all of His wisdom that created the very depths of our soul to need Him, and that He has led me all these years to walk with him in such a way that I find myself wasting away apart from Him.
Would you pray for me as I seek to set my heart on the giver of life? Would you join me in seeking to nurture my soul in the only one truly who satisfies and sustains?
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