Tuesday, July 19, 2022
That’s Real, Up Close and Real, Down Low and Real;
Not-People Up-Close Are Everything But Real
Psalm 34:8
O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.
Acts 12:7
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.
Words of Grace For Today
O taste and see that the Lord is good!
Yes!
But in life for us there is so much that does not taste good, or right, or real.
Since I cannot eat meat anymore as my body deteriorates with age and needs special attention to continue on, at the food bank they keep giving me ‘interesting’ food. Most of it is harmless if useless when it comes to nutrition. I’ve long since given up on food needing to taste even good. I just watch for nourishing and helpful for a few more years, so anything in the Mediterranean diet always sounds good.
Last time I has handed a pack of frozen burgers, ‘no meat so they’ll be good for you.’ I couldn’t say no.
I fried them up the other day. They don’t really have any protein in them, just wheat and palm oil and spices and oils and things I can’t pronounce or remember. And they taste like … well I can’t afford to throw out food, but I stopped eating that meal before I was half-full. Couldn’t swallow any more of those not-burgers. It’s never happened to me before: I started to gag on each bite.
As at the times in my life when I’ve cooked for myself I eat lots of tofu, lots of beans, peas, vegetables, fruits. I like fish, though I’m not partial to other kinds of seafood that are, shall we say, slimy or gooey. I particularly like refried beans. I don’t need to eat vegetarian but I like it.
What I can’t stand is when food tries to be something it is not. Not-burgers are like not-people; you wish you’d never seen them. I don’t mean any disrespect, but there are people, too, who try to be something they are not. Along the way they forget truth and honesty, justice and mercy, love and hope. Instead they try to make up for losing these with fake charms, broken promises, and chemically induced happiness. They just are not authentic at all any more. Everything they say and do is based on lies. And you can smell trouble coming behind them.
I’ve met drug dealers, murderers, and thieves, all who have said up front exactly who they were and what they did. Can’t say I liked what they did, but they were not trying to manipulate or con or dishonour everyone in their wake. Not-people leave nearly everyone in their wake wondering what happened and who did it to them. When you figure out who’s been conning everyone it’s usually too late and most people do not want to admit they’ve been played, so there’s little help fixing anything, if anything could be made right.
Not-burgers are like that. They promise the world and then they taste terrible going down, they mess with your system going through, and they pass with a vengeance as if they had something to prove to the world.
The most destructive kind of not-people are those that cloak themselves in religion. They promise and pretend to be oh, so good, when really they are oh, so unbelievably evil.
…
We need angels to come and knock the chains off our wrists, minds, and hearts so that we can, all of us, taste and see the goodness of God’s truth for all creation. We need not try to be what we are not, or try to force others to what they are not or lie about others so that the world thinks they are other than they are.