LEARNING BY MISTAKES

 Through their twelve years of school, through high school, our three boys took homemade bread sandwiches for lunch every day. But the big slices, fat whole wheat sandwiches brought curiosity.  Every week I ground whole wheat in a Whisper Mill (most often Hard Red Wheat) turning it into fine flour, then into bread. Getting lunches ready quickly, I did not slice the loaves carefully. Every day the sandwiches were large and each one was different. Often, they were natural peanut butter and butter, and cut up vegetables, fruit and a granola bar.

A mistake was to make beef bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise. It was cheap. Back then, our budget constrained me to watch the food prices carefully. Though grinding wheat and baking bread was a priority, I had not yet learned to be careful with processed meat.

On a field trip our middle son, Josiah, had to put his head out the bus window and vomit. I stopped buying bologna. The chemicals in cold-cut meats had warned me through our son suffering with a sick stomach.

I should have known that the preservatives in the meat were not good for health.

The Bible is a Guide to food simply by using certain food as illustration of God’s supply, created to nourish us. Look closely. Beginning with Adam and Eve God told them, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat..." Genesis 2:16.

Later, God instructed Noah about food in Genesis 9. Later there were guidelines and provision for His people when they escaped slavery in Egypt, their food was specifically specified on the night before the exodus. Then for forty years God sent manna every morning.

The Passover supper began when the Israelites were getting ready to leave Egypt where they had been slaves for four hundred years. The Passover Lamb was eaten with bitter herbs, on that fateful night, picturing a profound spiritual truth.

Now we know: The food for the Passover Feast was a figurative “picture” into the future: the perfect lamb slain pictured Jesus, God in human form, the Lamb of God. His blood shed for us, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

“Hearken diligently…eat that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” (Isaiah 55:2). “Thy words were found, and I did eat them…” (Jeremiah 15:16).

Traditionally food is part of connection to God, whether it is the Passover in the Old Testament or Communion with bread and wine in the New Testament. As a Christian our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit: God is pleased when food is part of our worship to Him.