Bread Basket

You know that old joke, “I know what to make for dinner: reservations”? Having someone else make the food, serve the food, and clean up after is an absolute dream.

Many of the restaurants we visit serve a little appetizer: maybe chips with salsa or a basket of bread with dipping oils. One favorite eatery serves hot rolls drenched in garlic butter. Or sometimes it’s biscuits with butter and jam or cornbread with honey. The best part? They’ll refill the bread basket as many times as you want. For free!

Therein lies the problem, and I’m not just talking carbs. The meal still lies ahead.

By the time the delicious dinner arrives, we’re full. We stick our forks in our entrees and take a few bites, but the food doesn’t taste as good as we remembered. The bread had seemed like a treat at the time, but because we ate so much of it, we have no room left for the nourishing parts of our meals.

This happens in our spiritual lives, too. We fill ourselves up on TV, movies, books, or social media, using up our time and even our daily dose of concentration. By the time we turn our attention to God’s Word—well, we’re stuffed! Instead of having a little of the bread and a lot of the meal, we eat a whole basket of garlic rolls, and there’s no room left for dinner.

Go ahead. Choose one biscuit: one TV show, something interesting on the Internet, or a few chapters of a great book. But be sure to save room for the main course every day (Psalm 119:103). I’m trying to consume less of the pre-meal entertainment so that I’ll still be hungry for the Word of God (Matthew 4:4).

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Taken from Dwell: 90 Days at Home with God by Sandra Byrd © 2023. Used by permission of Our Daily Bread Publishing®, Box 3566, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved. Further distribution is prohibited without written permission from Our Daily Bread Publishing (https://ourdailybreadpublishing.org) ® at permissionsdept@odb.org.