Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, dear ones.

It’s been raining at a temperature that I know is dumping a pile of snow in the mountains. It would be great if it would keep it up for one more week—since I’m scheduled to ski with my cousin and brother next Monday at Mt. Bachelor. That will be my first time on skis for this entire season.

Becki and I just completed a little walk/jog around the circuit of our driveway (6 times)—making just over a mile. The dogs sure get pumped over the excursion—but they still misplace balls.

I had no idea that I would find myself engaged in more logging yesterday. I simply went up to fetch my track hoe. But when I realized what the present strategy was there, I offered to use it to deck the logs from the trees I dropped a week ago. That will make it easy for the self-loader log truck to load from one spot next to the main road. I also dropped three more trees. The third was huge and didn’t go perfect. I wiped out a small section of wire fence. Not very serious.

Blessings on your day—with whatever it contains.

Love, Dad/Ray.

We hear lots of warnings these days about different harmful foods and substances. Bio-chemists and nutritionists report that a lot of our modern food is nearly non-food, and in many cases, counterproductive to health. Fat, cholesterol, preservatives, fertilizers, insecticides, hormones, nutrients, vitamins, and genetically modified agriculture are just some of the factors to be considered in food and their connections to health. It seems that modern man applying modern processes and modern additives so as to produce modern foods all join together to form a modern trend that messes up old-fashioned health—thus a long list of modern diseases. It would seem that if all of us could simply eat good old-fashioned natural organic food, malnutrition and a lot of modern disease could be eliminated.

Our last place to reside outside the USA was Vanuatu. Even there we witnessed the irony of this modern trend. You could hardly find a more wonderful environment for gardening. Lots of good soil. Lots of rain and water. And get this—a year-round growing season!—a blessing of the tropics. Nevertheless, malnutrition was (is) a growing health problem there. Why? Because a lot of people were turning away from the hard work of traditional gardening to the ease and taste of white rice, processed snack foods, soft drinks, and all kinds of other man-modified “treats”—while neglecting their traditional foods that provided such a great balanced diet.

In the first part of today’s reading, Jesus is giving His disciples a directive concerning psycho-spiritual nutrition. “Be careful…watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” I think it’s pretty easy to figure out that the yeast of the Pharisees represents RELIGIOUS TRADITION AND LEGALISM. And the yeast of Herod represents SECULARISM, HUMANISM, and WORLDLINESS. Jesus has already said that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The pure uncontaminated life of Christ and His Word are clearly good wholesome foods for soul, mind, and spirit. To mix into them a lot of other junk is to neutralize their value and damage one’s health. In agreement with this, my emphatic opinion is that it is virtually impossible to consume the pure Gospel along with the additive of unrestrained television (and the like) and come up with a healthy and productive life of godliness.

In so many words, I think Jesus is saying, “Be careful of your total diet. A good deal more than your physical health is at stake.”