Spiritual Nutrition

Spirituality Column #83
June 10, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Spiritual Nutrition
By Bob Walters

The great banquet of the Holy Spirit, the source of our spiritual nutrition, exists in our very real and palpable relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Things that enhance that relationship – the Bible, church, humility, service, prayer (the list is long) – feed our faith and both deepen and strengthen our commitment to walking the joyous but often hard steps of the true Christian life.

What steps?

Just take the examples of Christ in the Bible. That’s the most accurate picture of what a walk with God is supposed to look like. We all want the reception with palm leaves; but it’s that walk to the Cross that ultimately defines our faith. We need nutrition for that walk.

I’m not sure we’re going to need nutrition in Heaven, or in Hell, for that matter. Nutrition seems to be the stuff of this life, not the next. The Bible does not reveal a precisely recognizable nature of how the perfection of our eternal relationship with God works (“No eye has seen …” etc., 1 Corinthians 2:9), but there is no hint that it continues to be, on either our part or God’s, a work in progress.

At that point it’s a done deal.

Between the Bible, Christian traditions and my faith, I have no lingering doubts God has the eternity thing all figured out. My hunch is that he saves that part of the mystery for the end because … duh … it’s the best part.

But here and now is when developing that relationship provides the spiritual nutrition for our walk, both through the imperfections of our own lives in this fallen world, and for the hope we find in the glimmers of our potential for goodness in a beautiful world God created for us.

If we are having difficulty being certain of our relationship with God, we should look at the elemental components of how we build relationships with each other:
- we nourish relationships with love and grace and trust,
- we choke relationships with sin and fear and guilt.

It seems obvious which is the more nourishing three-course communion meal.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who has been putting on weight lately, neither ignores sin nor makes it the center of his spiritual life.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him ..."
1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)