If My Body Is a Temple, It’s the Temple of Doom

I Corinthians 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own.”

BodyThis verse clanks around my head. If my body is a temple, it is currently a temple of doom. Over the winter months I have allowed myself indulgences that I normally would not. What you eat in private, you wear in public. Honestly, I feel blah. I would say I feel out of shape but round is a shape. What have I done to myself? My foggy, lazy brain has a moment of clarity when I realize I have not given as much thought about my spiritual food and health as I have my physical health or appearance. Each day I spend a considerable amount of time preparing meals. I won’t even mention the time I spend on my appearance. I realize I don’t have the proper ratio. Have I carefully planned out my spiritual meals as much as I have my dinner? I spend hours on myself. I cannot sugar coat it. It’s self-absorption. I have cared more about what others see than what others can feel, experience and learn because I am a born again child of God.

There are times when I gorge on His living word. I cannot get my fill. His Word makes me feel alive, energized and curious. Then there are times I starve myself and become spiritually anemic. Too much time away from Him and his guidance creates a general malaise which affects my decisions and choices. If most of what I read, watch or eat is garbage, how do I expect myself to be prepared when God reveals an opportunity to me?

Daniel 1:12-16, “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetable.”

I want to eat to live, not live to eat. The food I eat should be fuel to help me fulfill what I am supposed to do. I yearn for the endurance to lift shovels of rock and dirt in the Dominican. I long for the strength to lift two Haitian orphans, one on each hip, and carry them around until they want me to put them down.

“God, help me to be obedient. I desire to do what You have called me to do. Feed me through your word. I am weak. Make me strong. Let my uncompromising faith be an example of how you changed me. You have placed me in this body, with this mind, to serve You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:26) Amen.”

 Jennifer Whittaker writes devotional articles for Buck Run. You can read her work here every other week.