The Christian Woman


 

Baby Food

By Marinda Smith

I was so excited when my son began to feed himself finger foods. He quickly became proficient at stuffing Puffs or Cheerios in his mouth. What I didn’t realize, was that once he mastered this skill he would begin putting everything in his mouth. The first foreign object I pulled out of his mouth was a roly-poly. Some poor, innocent roly-poly was making his way across our kitchen floor to join the rest of his roly-poly family hiding out somewhere in my house and he was scooped up and chewed on by my son. A few months ago, we were at my brother’s house when we realized that Eli was chewing on something. Upon further investigation my father pulled out a fly that was missing a wing. I tried not to think too hard about how gross all of this was. The next week I made a delicious pot roast with carrots and potatoes and we decided to give small pieces of the cooked carrots to Eli. He rolled his nose up at it. The child who eats roly-polies and flies rolled his nose up to my cooking. I know I’m not Rachel Ray, but I can cook a pot roast.

As he is approaching his first birthday, the addition of “big people food” has been a little more difficult than I thought it would be. He is very resistant to anything that doesn’t come from a Gerber container. All of this brought a scripture to my mind.

Hebrews 5:11-13
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

If I invited people to my home for a dinner and put containers of baby food and Cheerios on their plate and served them apple juice in sippy cups, they would think that this stay at home mom had completely lost her mind. Baby food is meant for babies and adults can move on to solid food. But how many Christians today have been Christians for years, but they still need the milk of the Word to feed them. They are technically spiritual adults, but have not trained themselves in the ways of righteousness. If you are not moving on to the meat of the Word, then you are not able to distinguish right from wrong. Is it any wonder that we live in a world where moral relativism is the rule of the day?

I’m not worried that Eli isn’t eating solid foods just yet. He only has four teeth. But at some point I bet you he will enjoy a good steak just like his daddy. As Christians we should examine our spiritual diet. Are we still on milk because we are immature, or are we digging into the meat of God’s word and growing up.

It’s amazing what an 11-month can remind us of, isn’t it?

Marinda Smith can be found at found at MarindaSmith.com