No more sweets, please

One of the great things about the Christmas season, for those of us with a sweet tooth, is the variety of sugary treats available everywhere. All cooks have a specialty, and at Christmas they put time and care into that specialty, so you are assured a quality product.


My grandma’s specialty was fudge, and she cooked a large assortment. Chocolate with and without nuts, peanut butter fudge with marshmallows, sugared walnuts and divinity, all in large quantities. Divinity was a fluffy, white, chalky confection that kind of melted away when you put it in your mouth. There really wasn’t much to it. Why it’s called divinity, I’m not sure.

There comes a time, though, if you overindulge, that you begin to sicken of sugar. You might still eat another chewy caramel when it comes to you on a plate, and you might go ahead and have “just a sliver” more of pie, or a cookie, or a candy cane, even when your mouth says “no” and your stomach says “no way.”

After a while, your tongue gets sore and your mouth hurts. Blisters can even form on the roof of your mouth.

Eventually, you even end up longing for something with a little more nutrition when the almond bark comes your way. You think of a roast beef sandwich or pickles on the relish plate. You might seek out a glass of milk or a slice of turkey because you’ve just had too many empty calories and you want a little salt and substance.

Christmas as a whole can be just like that. All the shallow little accessories become the main dish. We enjoy them. We revel in them. We’re glad they’re here. But eventually there comes a time when we are full and empty at the same time. We’re full of emptiness, and we crave something with a little meat to it. It’s a relief when we hear a deep, meaningful carol on the car radio, or when we close ourselves in a closet with the scriptures and just drink it in.

And our spiritual lives can become like that candy plate, too. We sample from this teaching, and that book, and this CD, and that DVD on how to walk with Christ, or how to help others walk with Him. Eventually, we can get to the point where one more fluffy, sweet, chalky, white bite is going to kill us. We desperately need to get out and just walk with Him and consume His flesh instead of all the sticky, pleasant substitutes. It’s easy to let the name “divinity” divert us toward unhealthy spiritual diets.