APPETITE

Before the evening meal one day, I was commenting to Kinya how little I appetite I had recently. When I was younger, I probably ate twice as much...

Not this young. When I was little--you can see high chair age--my missionary parents taught me to eat with chopsticks and rice bowl, so I feel at home eating Japanese or western style meals. We need to be content with whatever state we find ourselves in.

But I'll probably eat lots for supper tonight, I said, since we took that walk, and my body's probably tired from the exertion it's not used to. On our walk, we'd walked by the vegetable stand where there's produce straight from the field, not necessarily the polished and pretty stuff sold in stores. I'd wondered if it would be torn down during construction, but it was still there--yes! Thank you, Lord.

I wondered if my recent lack of appetite was actually because of my not going out and getting exercise? A coot in the gully seemed to tell me I needed to pick up swimming, or pool walking, or SOME kind of exercise, honk honk! Gotcha. Sometimes we Christians have less appetite for the Word and more for sports, politics, or show biz because we don't exercise spiritually to want any.

That evening meal was eaten up, all right--completely! And it didn't seem a chore at all. Now wouldn't it be strange to hear a person talking about how it was his personal responsibility to eat his meal or moral duty to finish his food? It's a lot more natural to see a person grin real big and "chow down", happy he gets to gorge himself, right? That's the way a child of God should attack Christian service, yes?