Spiritual Pasta: Feeding on God's Promises

Apologies that I am going to focus on good food in this devotional on fasting…

My wife’s very animated Brooklyn Italian family has truly blessed me over the years, a family culture very different from my Irish New England one. Italian family culture revolves beautifully around the kitchen and food. It brings the family together.  My first meal with them was unforgettable. The pasta, homemade manicotti, was brought first thing out to the table, and I proceeded to eat four or five plates of it. I thought that was the meal. That’s how it worked in my house – one dish and that was it.  I didn’t realize that was only the first course, and there was plenty more to come. Course after course of all sorts of dishes with names unfamiliar to me, but smells that were impossible to resist. I ate and ate out of the abundance of all the food.  I ate so much that I could barely leave the chair to make it to the couch to enter into a food-induced nap (I’m sure I’m the only one to experience this phenomenon).  Frankly I was grateful and content but a little overwhelmed by all the food.

While I am grateful for God’s blessing of good food and the wonderful bonding that comes around a crowded, boisterous Italian dinner table, I am also grateful for the blessing of fasting, of the choice God gives us to refrain from eating for the blessing of knowing our complete spiritual need and dependence on Him.

Jesus tells us in John 10:10, “…I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  As we fast, may we focus on the abundance of life promised by Jesus as we are in relationship with Him that goes far beyond the worldly satisfactions that we may attain or consume. Let us focus on the words of the prophet Ezekiel (echoed in John 10) about the promises of God:

“As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.”

May we feed today on the abundant promises of our Lord, spiritual nourishment that continues to feed us course after course, life-giving truth after life-giving truth that will never make us too full for Him. As Christ shares, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture” (John 10:9).

Kevin Collins