While in The Log Mark book store buying Little House on the Prairie for my girls, I asked Sue Bronson what the big sellers have been. She pointed me to a fiction book about life in the circus and then a stack of diet books. It’s amazing how many books can be written to tell you the same basic things:if you want to lost weight and be healthy you should eat the right foods, eat smaller portions and exercise. But, what would a diet plan look like for our spiritual life? I would like to focus on the staple of that diet, the base of the pyramid – the Bible.
A diet for our spiritual life is a good metaphor, because if we are to be healthy and grow spiritually we need to, as one writer put it, “eat this book (the Bible)”. We feed ourselves spiritually through service to others, listening to sermons, prayer and singing. One of the primary ways we are fed and formed is through the Bible, God’s written word to and for us.
My problem for a long time with this was that I didn’t see the Bible as the meal; I read it like a recipe book. I went to the Bible to find answers to particular issues: how do I pray, how to raise kids, how to manage my finances, what Jesus said about sexuality. Those and questions like them are answered, though not always as clearly as we would like (or think). I read the Bible for information, to answer questions, to know more about God. But, I have been learning that maybe I should be focusing less on information and more on formation. That is, I think we need to be reading the Bible more to be shaped by it, to allow God’s word to form us, not just inform us.
The image of eating the Bible is a helpful one. When we eat something, it is assimilated into our bodies and into our lives. When I was growing up, I remember hearing the phrase, “you are what you eat.” The same is true in our spiritual lives. When the prophet Ezekiel was given the task to speak to the people of Israel, God commanded him to eat a scroll and then speak to the people of Israel (Ezekiel 2:8-3:3; cf Jeremiah 15:16 and Revelation 10:9-10). The picture is of the prophet assimilating God’s word into his whole being so that when he speaks, God’s word will naturally come forth just as the food we eat is unconsciously assimilated into our bodies and is put to work in our words and actions.
I want to close with some thoughts on how you might begin a spiritual diet this year and how you might feed on the Bible, not simply studying it but taking it into your life in such a way that “it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father.” (Eugene Peterson)
Set apart a regular time for reading. It doesn’t have to be the start of the day, but a time when you are at your best and can be apart from the stress of life to open your life to God. Find a system so that you regularly cover the whole Bible On the other hand, don’t be in a hurry to just get through it – reading ththe Scriptures is not the time to practice your speed reading. Come to the Bible with the intent of knowing the will of God and the intent to do it. As you are reading ask, “God, what are you saying to me here?”. The goal is not to master the text and get all the answers – good interpretation is necessary – what you are seeking is for the text to shape and form you.
This is just a start of what a spiritual diet might look like. May the word of Christ dwell in you richly!
