The Feed Trough is Open

None of us want to be "judged", we'd rather be praised or appreciated which I guess are really just positive judgments rather than condemnations.  It is incredibly hard to hold back caustic words though when you see someone doing something that just appears asinine or ignorantly/apathetically stupid.  We've all been there, and if you haven't been yet today then it's only because you haven't watched the news or scrolled far enough down your FB screen yet to see the digital delivery of stupid stuff that drives you nuts.

I read this morning in Proverbs 27:7 "A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." (NKJV)

I've had a surface understanding of that verse and a few others nearly identical to it.  This morning I really got it on a much deeper more practical level, see if this makes more sense:

When someone is hungry (an analogy for missing something in their life) they will eat ANYTHING to fill the void.

Thus the stupid stuff that drives us nuts, puts us in a rage of righteous anger, or breaks our hearts.  It runs rampant around all of us.  Here are a couple examples one from my life and one from a friend watching the news last night - if these don't fit please feel free to fill in the blank with your own examples like your promiscuous friend or your belligerent relative or __________. 

My friend recovered from cancer who after months of treatment and detoxification is given a clean bill of health and immediately returns to smoking and daily alcohol consumption and is dehydrating, truly desiccating himself (he's at least 60lbs under weight and dropping daily) in front of my eyes because life without alcohol is impossible to face.  I want the friend under the mess, and will never have him.  I love him from a distance though he once thought I couldn't stand him - truthfully, he still doesn't understand my refusal to accept alcoholic abuse from him but my steadfast admiration for his knowledge and experience.  I like him, I just do.  Watching him die all over again after being delivered from the hand of death drives me nuts, knowing he won't change his personal behavior breaks my heart.

Last night on the local news in a town I don't live in, two men broke in to an 82 year old woman's home, brutalized and raped her precipitating a heart attack where she ended up in the hospital - what kind of crazy crap is that?  If it didn't put my friend into a state of righteous anger I would have been concerned for my friend's sanity and relationship with Jesus, as it is she was more concerned that she no longer has a desire to pray for those people's Salvation.  Sadly maybe, I reached that point long ago.  Some people only benefit this world by leaving it in my opinion.  Two thieves on the crosses to either side of Jesus, one had an honest view of his predicament and asked for God's mercy and received the assurance of paradise that day, the other made a different assessment of his situation, mocked Jesus, blaming his unfair lot in life on others and met his father the devil later that day.  It will always be this way.

While it is yet day however we must work, we must be in this world but not of it.  We must be the ones who provide food for the hungry soul or all they will ever eat is bitterness.  Stop saying you don't have enough, it couldn't be you, Jesus left an example in feeding thousands with table scraps and meager provisions finding baskets full of leftovers afterward.  Jesus makes every bit of the difference.  You can do this, people do do this everyday in myriad small ways and a plethora of huge ways.  Beloved we are the royal priesthood God has always intended, it is not for a priest, a minister, a professional Christian to do the work God put in front of YOU.  You can't even begin to estimate what unconditional love might do for the crazy maker in your life.

Let's Go!  Feed those around you with the good stuff, because if you don't they will eat anything they can stuff in their mouth.