nutrition

The final characteristic of all living things so helpfully recorded for us in the acrostic MRS GREN or as some of the Key Stage 2 science revision books call her – MRS NERG – is nutrition. We all take on food. One of our granddaughters asked me the other day what a woodlice ate. The answer was rotting vegetation – delicious. The same girl loves tuna fish pasta. She eats huge bowlfuls of the stuff whereas my other granddaughter of the same age hardly eats anything.

The choice of foodstuffs on the western supermarket shelves is phenomenal. Many pubs now serve food as a matter of course and again the choice is vast. However, we can’t cook a steak. Ask for ‘medium’ and it comes ‘well done’. Ask for ‘medium rare’ and it comes ‘well done’. Ask for well done and it comes burnt to a cinder! Ask for the same in France and it comes tethered to the plate otherwise it would walk off in front of your very eyes! Of course vegetarian food is now extremely popular and I have friends, who, if they cooked for me would easily persuade me to be one so accomplished are they; however I would probably succumb to the lure of a good sausage.

But when it comes to reading the scriptures I often find the Christ follower on a starvation diet. How many of us have actually read the bible through cover to cover?

When Elizabeth II became queen this is what was said to her: Our gracious Queen: to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; This is the royal Law; These are the lively Oracles of God.

As we choose to feed on God’s word by reading it sometimes it might seem like a dry crust but sometimes a gourmet meal. Either way it is nourishment for our lives. May we discover the living and lively Jesus in the pages of His book who feeds and gives us everything we need.

Geoff Lawton, 15/05/2008