Dear Ones,
Hope you are having a peace-filled day! This morning I made a cherry cheese cake pie and veggie stir fry  and went down for donuts. Our son and daughter-in-law from Kansas are soon stopping by on their way to the lake. We have Bible study here this afternoon and then I have women’s study at church tonight…a full rich day. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
I love to eat and I love to fix healthy meals! I also love to read about foods that are good for our bodies and find recipes full of good nutrition. But when does our focus on eating become gluttony? I am reading a book by Dennis Okholm on “Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins”; he is an Anglican pastor and teaches at Fuller Seminary and Azusa Pacific University. He writes about gluttony, the first of the common eight deadly sins listed centuries ago by a Evagrius, a desert monk, along with the other seven sins of avarice, vainglory, lust, anger, sadness, despondency and pride. They can be called principal faults or vices, but the common root in all of them is self-love. 
Eating is a necessity for our health, of course, but we are not to be overly concerned and make a god of our belly! We hear so much about food and millions of Americans are on diets, spending $35 billion on weight loss diets and products. But gluttony is not just about overeating as some overweight people are not gluttons and some thin people are. In fact, we can be gluttonous about pleasures and material things too. When we eat more than necessary and get so taken up by the pleasure of eating that it turns us away from God, then eating becomes a perversion. Satan even tried to  get Jesus to turn the stones into bread when he was hungry in the wilderness, but it didn’t work. Gluttony has more to do with how we consume food. Do we pay too much attention to food and gorge ourselves and not savor it?  Is it a status symbol to try to outdo the hostess of the last dinner party we went to? Do we make sure others know we went to an expensive restaurant and have tasted exotic foods? Overconcern for food can become an idolatry. It is not the food itself that is the problem but all the thought we give to our eating. There are so many food shows on TV  now that we can get consumed with food to the neglect of other responsibilities and seek to have our longing for God fulfilled in eating. Anything we use to displace God in our lives becomes an idol. When we find our rest and peace in Him, our cravings for food will be held in check too. 
Let us put our focus on the Lord, enjoy and savor meal times, and increase our appetite for the Lord. Only He satisfies our heart hunger! “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matt. 5:6 (ESV)
Challenge for today: Thank the Lord for your food and savor every bite!