faith food

First I read a news story about how much autism is on the rise. The article suggested that there are many environmental factors contributing to children developing autism. A fierce dedication to organic products, removing plastics and other things that create VOCs from the home, keeping WiFi use limited, cautious vaccination consideration, and whole, organic nutrition was prescribed to protect your children.

Okay, I can do that.

Then I read an article about family budgeting. Focused spending, buying in bulk (do they even sell organic in bulk?), couponing (hmm…I have seen a few organic coupons, but not a lot), and buying used products (used products that don’t create VOCs should be easy to find, right?) were all encouraged.

Sure…I can maybe, possibly, attempt to figure this out….

Later, my neighbor drove by and we chatted trash. “You know, the experts say we already need an earth and half. Just wait until China and India really get going!”

Oh, for the love of abundant clean water, we are headed for a society that looks like that movie Mad Max!!

For several hours I wallowed in the pitiful thought that my children and our society are doomed.

Then I remembered what a wise man once told me. A minister from India was visiting our church years ago, and he spoke of living in the type of poverty that we had all certainly never known.

“We eat what we have,” he had said, as he had processed the idea that Americans prefer organic products, make choices about what type of bread they eat, and reject milk if it isn’t the kind they like or think is healthy.

“We eat in faith, trusting that God will keep us healthy with what He has provided.”

I guess it’s kind of like this part of the Bible:

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” -Matthew 6:31-32

Today, I will serve my children organic products, because we can find them, we have figured out ways to afford them, and I do think it is better for them. I will put the phone on speaker just in case those invisible waves are as dangerous as some people say. We will recycle as much as we can, and try to consume less. Tonight my boys may eat too much sugar- we have home group and they have been known to fly under the radar a bit more when there are thirty people in the house.

Today we won’t play video games; we will read lots of books; we will try to buy products whose production didn’t involve slaves; we will eat as much fruit and veggies as we can stand (for Boy 2 that may mean exactly one apple); we will look for opportunities to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We will do a million little things and make thousands of tiny choices that hopefully will add up to a responsible and healthy way of living.

But we won’t do it because we are worried about the future. We will do it in faith. Our choices will be made from a consciousness that this is God’s creation and we must be responsible for it.

Most of all, today I will remind myself and my children of His faithfulness to us, and that in the end, it’s His world and we are just living in it.