Researchers at Rutgers University made headlines this week with a study connecting nutrition and the way our minds work. In plain terms, they found that what we put into our bodies over time shapes not only our health but our thinking — our memory, our focus, our clarity. It's the kind of finding that makes you set down your fork and wonder for a moment. We've all heard the old saying, you are what you eat. Science keeps nodding along.
I don't write to give you a diet plan. Goodness knows I've enjoyed my share of church potlucks here in Ravenna, and I'm not about to start scolding anybody over the casserole table. But there's a truth tucked inside that study worth pulling out into the light. The daily, quiet choices about what we take in — small, unremarkable, repeated a thousand times — end up making us who we are.
The Slow Work of What We Take In
Nobody becomes healthy or unhealthy in a single meal. It's the pattern. The same is true of the soul. We don't grow strong in Christ by one dramatic experience, and we don't grow weak from one bad day. We are formed, slowly, by what we feed on again and again.
When Jesus was in the wilderness, hungry after forty days of fasting, the tempter told Him to turn stones into bread. Listen to His answer: "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). Jesus was not dismissing bread. He knew hunger. He was reminding us that we are two-part creatures. We have a body that needs feeding, and we have a soul that needs feeding just as surely — and starving the second is every bit as dangerous as starving the first.
The Diet of the Soul
Here's a question worth sitting with: what has your soul been eating lately? For many of us, the honest answer is a steady stream of news, worry, and the endless scroll of a screen. We wake and reach for our phones before we reach for the Lord. We fill the quiet moments with noise. And then we wonder why our spirits feel thin and anxious and undernourished.
The prophet Jeremiah once wrote, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart" (Jeremiah 15:16). He described Scripture as food — something to be taken in, chewed on, digested until it becomes part of you. That's a beautiful picture. The Word of God is not merely information to be read once and shelved. It is nourishment, meant to be returned to daily, until it works its way into the very fibers of who we are.
Small Meals, Faithfully Taken
If a scientist can measure the effect of years of ordinary meals on the mind, imagine what years of ordinary time with God does to the soul. A few minutes in the Psalms each morning. A prayer whispered over the sink. A verse memorized and carried through the day. None of it feels dramatic. But it adds up. It shapes you. Over the long haul it produces a person who is steady when the ground shakes, hopeful when the news is grim, gentle when the world is harsh.
Jesus called Himself "the bread of life" and said, "he that cometh to me shall never hunger" (John 6:35). What a promise. There is a hunger in every one of us that no meal, no distraction, no achievement can fill. It was made to be satisfied in Him.
So take care of your body — the Rutgers folks are right about that. Eat your vegetables. But don't neglect the deeper hunger. Come to the table the Lord has set. Feed on His Word. Sit down with Him unhurried, again and again, and let Him nourish the part of you that lasts forever.
You become what you feed on. By His grace, let it be Him.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.