Detours on the Road from Heart to the Mouth
“Detours on the Road from the Heart to the Mouth”
The surviving food from our holiday onslaught has now made its way out of our home. I watched as a little nuclear caravan formed at our refrigerator and made a quick trip to our neighbor’s backyard. After presents, food is the most popular part of the holiday season. For that we can be grateful we live in the United States where our normal holiday diet consists of turkey, ham, cornbread dressing, smashed potatoes, cheese dip, and a roast beef sandwich with peanut butter and jelly on it.
For some African tribal people who live on the shores of Lake Chad, algae are considered a delicacy. If they had visited our home when our daughter was a teenager her closet would have been their banquet room. In ancient China, and parts of India, mice were considered a delicacy. In their nursery rhymes when the mouse ran up the clock his time had run out. With no seasoning, a favorite bedtime story was “Three Bland Mice.”
Obviously the most popular reason for celebrating the holidays is that it gives us an opportunity to bake bizarre desserts and give them to some unsuspecting friend as a well-intentioned gift. Here’s a holiday riddle: What is the only dessert that can be used as a hockey puck and then mailed as a Christmas gift? Here’s a hint. The first one was made in Egypt thousands of years ago and is still in circulation. If you said date bread, you were close. The answer is fruitcake. I’ve never seen anyone actually eat it but it does get mailed a lot.
Pies are everyone’s holiday favorite but when they were invented in ancient Greece they were not filled with fruit but with meat or fish. I can hear Zeus and Apollo as children around the dinner table . . . “More tuna meringue pie please!” In the 17th century, berries began appearing in pies rather than fruits. A popular berry in English pies was the dark blue hurtleberry, as in the statement, “The baby was tired of being force-fed strained fruit. In a final act of defiance he hurtled his berries.”
For every red-blooded and high-cholesterol American, sweets are an important part of our existence. In my diet Twinkies are a major food group. Some people are the same way about chocolate. My personal taste buds light up and send out party invitations when they see chocolate approaching. If something sour comes along they tremble in fear and end up in deep depression.
With that in mind, why do some people insist on filling their mouths and our ears with sour words? Jesus may be in their heart but they aren’t letting him out through their mouth. When God was passing out sweetness they were in the pickle line. Proverbs 16:24 says, “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (ESV). Proverbs 27:19 says, “As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man” (ESV).
Kind words build us up . . . kind words, like sweet-smelling bread, rise up from kind thoughts baked in the heart. Remember . . . nothin’ says lovin’, like somethin’ from the spiritual oven.