CONSUME ME

My closets and shelves are so full of clothes, I have to find new places to store the things I’m not currently wearing, and sometimes I’m too clever for my own good. I choose a storage spot I can’t remember when the season comes around again, and then there are things I can’t find until the season is half over.

And it’s not just clothes – there are currently more cars than drivers in our family. There are multiple television sets, multiple CD players, stuff to store the stuff and stuff to clean stuff. We are consumers.

Jesus offers me a very different perspective on consumption. “Consume Me,” He says. “These other things you consume can only satisfy you for a moment, and you know that. In fact, they consume you. They eat up your days, they devour your attention. These things are not the good life. They distract you and keep you from living at all. They keep you wanting more. Only I can satisfy you.”

I know He is telling me the truth, and I long to consume Him, once and for all, but I know that to consume Him is to become like Him. And when I am like Him, I must say to a needy world, “Consume me.” Ah, that is the sticking point. If I open myself completely to His endless compassion, it will sweep through me like a flood, and it is not just my stuff that will be washed away.

For the past year, I have made a point of acquiring less, and giving more away. And my time, the consumable I have hoarded most of all, I am trying to give more of that away too. I am giving more of it to Him, and that has allowed me to find the joy of reaching out to people simply because they need me, simply because I can. I am still mostly selfish and easily distracted, but He promised me, “Come to Me, and I will never drive you away. It is the will of my Father that you will find eternal, authentic life.”

He wants me to take more than these nibbles – I want that too. For now I know that each taste brings me back for more, and changes me.

— Linda Moody

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist