post turkey

Everything is different "post turkey".

For me, it usually starts about two days before the big turkey lynching. I get these deep desires in places I don't even know were inside me to stuff my face and my stomach with as much turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pie as I can possibly imagine. It's like I'm lusting for real but its food and its weird but its there.

Fast forward to the self-entitled "gorge day". I have heard of the sin of gluttony but I don't know about it too much because there isn't too much hype in the Christian world about gluttony. I wonder why? Is it because it's not an epidemic? No. Obesity is one of the biggest threats to our youth and our culture. Is it not because it isn't pervasive? No. Gluttony is everywhere you look. Is it because most Pastors couldn't teach a topic they have no authority in? What is gluttony anyway?

Gluttony is the worship of food to the demise of the body. Some eat too much, some eat too little, and some eat regardless of the physical outcome to their overall health. That's gluttony.

So, in my premeditated, sinful state, I approach the BIG day with the anticipation of a toddler that just saw her binky. In a word: hungry.

I am about to eat to my hearts content. As I preview the casseroles, and the jellies, and the baked yams with marshmallows on top, and the big bird cut open for this annual time of worship? I am quickly grabbing the biggest plate I can find to start stacking food on top of food. With my jumbo-size "Thanksgiving-edition" plate in hand I start filling up food like a real estate developer in Japan: tall and up.

I sit down and take care of it in about 5 minutes. 4000 calories: 5 minutes. There's a record in there somewhere.

Fast forward 2 hours.

I'm tired. My stomach hurts. My body is sending signals that my brain can't interpret. "Go to the bathroom. Go lay down. Go outside and exercise this off. Go have more. Go try to throw it all up. Go talk to your relatives you haven't seen in 4 years. Go fart. Go burp. Just go!"

Everything is different "post turkey".

The same can be said of sin. There are things in my life that look amazing, look incredible, could even be profitable, but they are not permissible. Sometimes we "starve ourselves" from certain things that we know in our hearts are sinful and so we avoid them. Then, when temptation starts rearing its head, we are enticed by the allure and the bogus promises that they convey. "You need this, you have been waiting for this, you deserve a break, this will be make you happier"

The empty promises so easily picked off before as temptation now start to speak to us in our own voice. It's at this point that I have to remind myself of my eating gorge and the effects of my unprovoked, premeditated turkey and stuffing worship. And the feeling it left me with.

Not full. Just bloated.

I pray that God will always keep me full. Keep my appetite on Him and the things He desires for me and the food that He provides that is always perfect, always filling, and always what I need.

Psalm 81:10