SOUL FOOD

One of the books that shaped my early life as a Christian was Elisabeth Elliot’s The Shadow of the Almighty: the Life and Testament of Jim Elliot. Using his journals, she weaves a biography that is a chronicle of spiritual formation.

In one of his journal entries Jim wrote: “The soul does not seem to mind what it is occupied with, but only cares that it be kept occupied. It is passive as to choice. I choose, my soul responds, with ringing laughter, emotion, or pure worship. It is a tool, not a craftsman, and must be controlled. It is as amoral as a bed, but beds can become places of illegitimate activity. Son of God, purger of the inner parts, Discerner of my sitting down, my risings, wilt Thou hallow this soul of mine? The choice is mine, you say? Ah, yes, the choice is mine.”

Last week I spent a day as an invited guest in a context that was once a major characterization of my life. I had allowed an avocation to grow into a relative obsession. It wasn’t something inherently “wrong,” but it became such a part of my identity that it was as much or more evident in my life as my professed commitment to Jesus.

As I reflected on that day I realized there is an earthy part of me that so wanted to be able to live in a “both/and” world instead of the “either/or” called for by Jesus. It was ironic that the Gospel reading for that day last week was from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says we cannot serve both God and mammon, and that where our heart is, our treasure is there, too.

For all the Lord has done and is doing in me, I still struggle with the sensual pull that is inherent in life in this world — for life to be pleasant with food, housing, clothing, climate, absence of irritations, the temporal pleasure of eroticism.... The carnal mind always desires an indulgence, whether it is a brief look, a prolonged fantasy, “one exception,” or a wholesale abandonment. And the truth is, the look and the fantasy and the “exception” all lead, if left unchecked, to the abandonment.

“The soul does not seem to mind what it is occupied with, but only cares that it be kept occupied.... Son of God, purger of the inner parts, Discerner of my sitting down, my risings, wilt Thou hallow this soul of mine? The choice is mine, you say? Ah, yes, the choice is mine.”