Snacks

When the clock strikes 4:00pm, a magical thing happens.  My sweet adorable children become pillagers and plunderers of the pantry.  Call it the case of the after-school munchies.  They are ready to eat everything in sight.  But, what always amazes me are the choices they make (which I often veto!).  We are a mere hour or two from a fantastic balanced meal and they want junk food.  Cookies, cakes, candy, crackers, chips...they can't get enough of the "C" food group.  Yesterday, I looked at my nine year old and saw that he was holding his snack choice of an oatmeal cream pie and a sucker.  Seriously???  His eyes looked like those spinning eyes in the cartoons, no lie.  He was ready to feast on...well...sugar.  I asked him to please put them back and choose something that resembled an apple next time.  But the whining ensued.  So, you can guess what happened next.  I sat him down and read a lovely tale about the food pyramid.  NO.  I used my stern mom voice and sent him to his room without a snack.
This really made me ponder several things.  First, I should take some of the blame here.  If I didn't have junk food for them to grab onto after school, we wouldn't have this issue.  So, today, I am purging the pantry of all sugar (and I'll hide my M&Ms better). Because we are all, in fact, human.  When faced with a choice between a banana and a candy bar, the candy bar will always win.  I can help them by giving them better snack choices.  But, this also made me (as usual) reflect on my spiritual appetite.  I have always been a snacker.  I'll take a little bit of God (the healthy choice)  But I really love having the world too (the junk food).  And sometimes I settle for junk food right before God is ready to bless me with a feast.  I wonder how exasperating it is for God to see me settle for the things that aren't good for me, when He is cooking up an amazing plan that will glorify Him.  Perhaps I should take a lesson from my pantry purging and purge my life of some of the snacks.  What are the snacks in my life?  Hmmmm, facebook?  :)  people pleasing, shopping, mindless tv, food.  But, what if I filled my life with God's rich and satisfying food.  Would it fill me up so much that I wouldn't desire the junk food anymore?  That is my desire.  I want to be so filled with the things of God that I don't want anything else.  I don't want to care if people think I'm strange for coloring outside the lines of life and chasing after Christ.  Jesus didn't eat junk food.  Yes, pretty sure that is in the Bible somewhere...  He feasted on His Father's words constantly.  That is how He was able to stay in God's will consistently.  So, I'm going to make it my quest to purge the junk from my life and look only to God for the real nourishment.  Because, when I read these words from Psalm 63 out loud, I want to mean them with everything that is in me:
"O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.  I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.  Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.  I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands.  My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.".
What junk food are you ready to eliminate from your diet?