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| If only my starchy little friend turned out like this... |
Anyone who has ever ventured into the uncertain waters of dieting knows this verse well. We often cite it as we gorge ourselves at the local smorgasbord, guffawing as we devour heaping "Tower of Babel" sized portions of edible goodness.
"Well, you know what the Good Book says! We can't live on bread alone, that's why I'm piling this plate full of pie!"
Sure this teaching from Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3:
"He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD."
And sure, that was talking about a spiritual hunger that God sought to teach the Israelites about while using the physical act of random divinely-baked bread falling from the heavens to illustrate it. It's just such easily picked low-hanging fruit in the world of Christian humor!
So, you should understand that I'm not a patient dieter. Each diet that I go on must produce immediate earth-shattering results or I will cut and run to the nearest fast food place and gorge myself like Egypt's famine is about to hit. This story is about one of those crazed diet plans.
I decided to go on some weirdo GM diet where you eat only baked potatoes and veggies for a few days, only to switch to bananas and milk one day, and meat and tomatoes another. It's a bizarre act of dietary Jiu-Jitsu designed to confuse your stomach into thinning out.
Does it work? I have no idea. I didn't get much beyond the first day.
It all began with a baked potato.
It was early morning. I was getting ready for work. I'm not a morning person and yet my current job requires me to get up when it is still dark on most mornings. So getting ready in the morning is often a comedy of errors.
My meal that fateful day was supposed to be a baked potato with a little bit of butter. As I have never made a baked potato in the microwave myself, I asked my wife how long to cook the little guy.
She told me 20 minutes.
Some of you just fell out of your chair. And yet it seemed so correct to me.
Of course, she was thinking about the amount of time she cooks enough baked potatoes for a family of 5. She was also thinking as a rational being who would remain in the kitchen checking the little starchy delights every 5 minutes.
Not knowing any better, I decided that I could put the potato in the microwave and then return upstairs to resume getting ready for work. So, I put my single potato into the microwave for 20 minutes (GASP!) and then bounded up the stairs to finish preparing for my day.
I can only imagine the pain and suffering that poor potato would know in the moments that followed. Apparently a single potato is no match for the awesome incendiary power of a modern microwave.
White fluffy starchiness was replaced by cinder and ash as smoke and flames burst from my little multi-eyed vegetable friend. The fire threatened to consume much more than the potato if left unstopped.
Meanwhile, I was upstairs ironing clothes and doing my best impersonation of the slow and steady turtoise.
Thankfully, my father-in-law lived in the in-law suite right off the kitchen and was able to intervene. Unfortunately, however, he ripped open the flame-filled microwave and threw water into it. The tsunami of ice cold refreshment sent the scalding charcoal of a potato corpse careening toward the kitchen floor where it created a crater of burn marks right in the center of the linoleum floor.
Other water and hot refuse hit the gas stove below. Flames reached up above the microwave and licked the walls, creating such soot not seen this side of Santa's suit.
As my father-in-law breathed a sigh of relief, a burst of flames emerged from the once dormant stove. Apparently some hot goodness had fallen into the way of the gas line. More rushing water ensued.
Blissfully unaware of the devastation created by my new diet in the kitchen below, I skipped jubilantly down the stairs and wondered at the massive plumes of smoke in the house.
"Boy, I must be tired. My eyes still can't focus. It looks like there's smoke in here!"
When I turned the corner into the kitchen to behold Dante's inferno, I was shocked.
Needless to say, after I had created such carnage, I decided to abandon the new diet. In fact, after taking the day off to deal with the insurance company, we opted to hit McDonald's for lunch and abandon dietary restrictions for the foreseeable future (probably chanting that man cannot live on bread alone as we did!)
What does this story teach us besides disqualifying me as a contestant on the "Next Food Network Star?"
Well, like the Israelites, I often look for the quick fix. In the diet world, faster isn't always better. I try to take shortcuts. Unfortunately, like the Israelites, I sometimes can do it with my faith as well. Sometimes, I forget the manna that God miraculously provided and exchange a miracle for covetousness. Sometimes, I forget to go to the instruction manual for life each day and read God's Word on what I should do and how I should behave because I have things to do.
God doesn't desire us to take short-cuts. Sometimes, we need to be patient and wait. Sometimes our lack of patience will result in flaming balls of potato refuse.
Sometimes, we need to stop looking at God for what He can do for us and start looking to get to know Him more and see what we can do for Him. It's not how quickly we run our race of life, it's how well.
Like the baked potato that met its demise that early morning, too many people allow death to reign in their daily lives because they are not connected to God in a personal and powerful way. God desires balance for our lives and that can only be accomplished by placing Him in the very center where He belongs! And yet, so many of us treat him like a Genie that will rain quail and manna down when we clap our hands.
His desire is that we would earnestly seek Him with all our heart and soul. Even those of us who don't fall prey to the gimme syndrome, find ourselves looking elsewhere for what God wants in our lives. Too often we rely on the wisdom of others instead of God's Word on the subject. And then they tell us to cook a potato for 20 minutes in the microwave.
We will only truly live the life that God has for us when we make Jesus central to our lives. Just as Moses reminded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6 to impress their faith upon their hearts and incorporate it into their children by making it permeate every aspect of their lives, God desires the same for us today.
As Deuteronomy continues, Moses warns his people once again about the centrality of God to their future well-being in Deuteronomy 8:11-14:
"Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
He then concludes in Deuteronomy 8:19-20 that:
"If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God."
Moses isn't trying to scare his people here. Okay, maybe he is. He's trying to remind the people that he has sacrificed for, intervened for with both God and man, and given his life to serving to stay focused. His admonition to the Israelites has been proven time and time again in the history of man. Churches, kingdoms and individuals have burned the baked potatoes of their lives by refusing to seek God first and instead relying on quick fixes, the urgency of now and bad advice.
I don't know about you, but I have seen what a microwave can do to a potato in just 20 minutes. I don't want to see what the wrath of God can do! I'll gleefully take an extra helping of quail with some manna on the side and personally convey my compliments to the chef on a daily basis!
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