‘The cheese shall inherit the earth’
By Elizabeth Prata
I wrote on my other blog yesterday about the food haul I scored at Kroger. I am trying my best to manage my budget with these ever-rising food prices. Since I’m so intolerant of processed foods I can’t cheap out or take any shortcuts with my menu. I have to cook everything I eat myself and it has to be fresh. I go thru copious mounts of fruit and veggies, and I try to find reasonably priced seafood and chicken. It’s getting harder.
One thing Kroger does is have rotisserie chickens for sale. I like chicken if it’s already cooked and I can slice off my own meat, ensuring nothing texturally off is going to make me gag and turn away from chicken forever, lol.
The rotisserie chickens are getting smaller, I noticed, and the price is creeping up. They are $8 now. But when they mark them down to $4.25 and I have the $1.25-off coupon I feel like the Queen of the World when I can score a whole, cooked chicken for $3.
Lately I’ve been having tofu, eggs a that a friend in church gives away, and quinoa for my proteins, so I was ready for something more substantial. I was on the hunt for chicken!!
I stopped in after church and headed straight for the spot where the cooked chickens are kept.
But now I must digress for a moment. Before I was saved, I used to enjoy Monty Python, both the 1960-1970s TV show, and their movies. The film The Life of Brian tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Graham Chapman), a young Jewish-Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah. It was one of the highest grossing movies in 1979, and is listed as one of the top 50 funniest movies. It was not without controversy, as you might expect. It was banned in several countries, it was picketed for blasphemy, and so on.
Me as a pagan, well, all that just made me want to see it all the more. There was one scene I remember and enjoyed the most. It was when a figure of the real Jesus was giving the Sermon on the Mount, distantly, and the people at the bottom of the mount had a hard time hearing it clearly. I remember it this way, though the actual scene in the movie is slightly different.
[Distant figure of Jesus saying] ‘The cheese shall inherit the earth’
[Crowd member] Aw, why should they get it?
I laughed. It’s just like us sinful humans, isn’t it?! To be jealous of what someone else has. Glad I’m not like that!
So back to Kroger. I’m pushing the grocery cart toward the chicken area, almost there, and just then I see a woman pulling away with three marked down chickens in her cart. WHAT?! Did she take all of them? Why should she get it?
I stewed and fumed.
Oh.
Wait a minute. I AM like that!
I talked myself down from the cliff. I decided to not think that she was greedy. I decided to think that maybe she has a large family. Maybe she has 2 friends who would appreciate the chickens. Maybe she is going to make chicken pot pies for the homeless.
I don’t know her deal, but I know my deal. The Bible tells us not to covet what others have. It also tells us to think of others above ourselves. It also tells us that God will provide. It tells us to rejoice with others. And more. So many verses I was breaking. I repented and asked the Spirit to turn my mind from my covetous anger.
God reveals sin to us and I thank Him that He revealed it immediately. I pray we recognize this reveal when it happens. I haven’t bribed anyone lately, I haven’t murdered anyone recently. I haven’t committed ‘big sins’ but I do commit sin. ‘Little’ sins are sins. Momentary sins are sins.
I can’t be SO focused on the deal that I overlook the people. If He’d wanted me to have the chickens, He’d have arranged for me to arrive 5 seconds earlier rather than 5 seconds later. Trusting that the Lord will provide is a big ask, but it helps to grow our faith. Apparently I have a ways to go in that department.
But how wonderful that we can repent to our Savior and He forgives us. How wonderful really, that He reveals our sin to us. How wonderful that He puts both big and little hurdles in front of us so we can grow in holiness.
As Jerry Bridges wrote in his fantastic book “Respectable Sins”,
“One of our problems, however, is that we neither think of ourselves as saints — with our new state’s concurrent responsibility to live as saints, nor do we think of such actions as our gossip and impatience as sin. Sin is what people outside our Christian communities do. We can readily identify sin in the immoral or unethical conduct of people in society at large. But we often fail to see it in what I call the “acceptable sins of the saints.” In effect, we, like society at large, live in denial of our sin.”
“[W]e can be orthodox in our theology and circumspect in our morality and yet tolerate in our lives some of the subtle “acceptable” sins we are discussing in these chapters. I believe that all of us have “blind spots,” character flaws, or subtle sins, that we are not aware of.”
Let’s keep our consciences sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading us to conviction of our sins. I’m not a super-saint. In this case I repented eagerly and immediately. Other times, the Spirit has had to metaphorically hit me upside the head with a 2X4 long after. But the main idea is, we should always strive to keep growing in holiness.
The Westminster Confession of Faith says of Sanctification:
1. They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them: the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
2. This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part; whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
3. In which war, although the remaining corruption, for a time, may much prevail; yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome; and so, the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Sigh. Onward and upward. Only way to go.
The ‘weak’ in the verse is me, not the chicken
