Late last night while Kate & I watched TV, we found a program entitled “Freaky Eaters”, a show about people who have severely abnormal eating habits like a man who only eats cheeseburgers, or a woman who eats candy three meals a day. Almost always the diagnosis saw their habits as evidence of addictive behavior, including last night’s individual who drinks 30 cans of regular cola (aka. not sugar free or diet) a day, and has so for many years. If you do the math, the totals are staggering: 30 cans a day times 365 days a year gives you a whopping 10950 cans of cola a year which equates to roughly 25 pounds of sugar every couple of days. Was this individual 500 pounds? No. Was she diabetic? No. Was she someone who sat around all day? No, she is a medical professional! She works in a hospital as a nurses aide.
Evidence like our soda-swilling friend and experiences that we all share go to show that knowing something is bad or good for you and actually applying that belief to your life are very different things. As a church & as people of faith we fall into this trap too. We often know precisely how it is to get the things we want - involvement into the community, mission projects, fellowship, an active prayer life, opportunities to serve - and recognize that without these things we might move in unhealthy directions but something often prevents us from making it happen. Something that we can not always name immediately.
I would like to suggest that we take the month of October and be intentional about finding the things that we can do both personally and together as a church family that continue to propel us in a healthy direction, and for some, provide a new path towards a greater sense of church and self. It might be a month of hard questions and difficult answers, but like the transformation the leaves undergo during the start of fall that ultimately leads towards a rebirth in the spring, what we do now carves out a place for the rebirth and renewal God can bring in the days to come.
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