Diet of Perseverance: Part One

A week ago, I celebrated a worship day in Bible class by bringing food for my students. Oranges, breads, trail mix, BBQ potato crisps... all sorts of goodness. Each of the foods represented something about our faith in Christ and who God is to His people. The students' response was intriguing.

First of all, they just ate. No thought, no pause to take in the words that I spoke about our Lord, no silence even. They ate and talked as if our devotional time was just another meal in the cafeteria. Of course, this was a first run through the experience, and I'd change some things for next time, but I was surprised at how little attention the students have for the sacramental, the symbolic. Food is food.

But even more surprising was their choice of what not to eat. More than a handful of students chose not to eat two specific items out of the offerings, a wonderfully fresh Cibiatta bread and the nuts that were in a trail mix of M&M's, raisins, and nuts.

What did they eat? Well, they gulped down greedy handfuls of cheesy garlic bread, cheddar and BBQ potato chips, and they specifically picked out all the M&Ms in the trail mix to eat those. It seems the unhealthier the food, the more it appealed to the average student.

But this becomes really interesting when I started looking at what the foods symbolized. The cheesy garlic bread symbolized that Jesus declared himself the bread of life, a staple of an everyday diet, a foundation. Students readily ate the bread, and I have found that students in my classes here would readily recognize Jesus as a reality. They believe in God, cognitively, they mostly haven't found the actions that show they are following. But as far as belief as a foundation? Sure, they've got that.

The potato chips symbolized saltiness, and our need for God. Salt makes you thirsty, and God is the "living water." So, again, this is a truth that many of my students understand. They go to the old floral-patterned Sunday school rooms of their traditional Mennonite churches, and they hear the words repeated to them again and again. Jesus is Savior, we all need God, God loves all of us. They hear these words and memorize them, then spill them out in my class thinking they've got all the answers to faith. Again, they've got the foundations, but they don't want to move past that.

And finally, M&Ms symbolized hope. The sweet goodness that tells us that God is using all things to bring around for the good. Yet, students don't see hope that way. They don't hope that God can use all things, they hope that God will make everything perfect and easy. But that's not the way God usually works is it?

My students loved the food's that symbolized God's importance and goodness, but they lacked a fullness of understanding. They have a foundation of faith, which is so very good, but they lack the maturity to see that built on. This is a generalization, but I've often seen it as true throughout the years.

But does it hold true for me too? Do I love God's goodness and have no desire to see the full picture of how God works? Do I want the sweet, but none of the bitter? Do I want to pick and choose the flavors that God adds to life, to make it full, abundant and true?