At the start of this year, I decided I was going to live a healthier lifestyle. You know, exercise more, eat healthier, and maybe even shed a couple of kilos.
I found out very quickly that with so much junk food available, it’s very difficult to make healthy eating choices. Too often, the unhealthy choice is the simpler one (or looks like it’d be the tastier one). Sometimes, it’s just easier to grab a pack of crisps or a premade sandwich off the store shelf than it is to make myself a salad or a healthier meal. In the long run, the healthy choice is worth it, but I find myself making wrong decisions along the way.
When taking all of this into consideration, I saw parallels with my spiritual life. Just like it’s easy for me to make unhealthy eating choices, it’s easy to lean to my lazy side and not look after my spiritual life. Instead of taking a spare moment to pray or read a devotional article, I might browse the internet, check the news, or just watch a movie or a TV episode. Those things aren’t bad in themselves, but the trouble comes when I don’t balance these activities with the fresh clean water of godly input.
We need to look after our spiritual diets as much as we look after our physical diets. “The body without the spirit is dead.”1 We can work to prevent spiritual sickness by exercising our faith and filling our minds with these balancing elements: God’s Word, prayer, godly music, devotional books, uplifting conversation, and showing care for others.
The spiritual and practical coexist in our lives, and if we keep them both in their right proportions, we’ll be a whole lot better off!
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.—Hippocrates (c.460 BC – c.370 BC)
- James 2:26 ↑