Diet Devotional 27

Note: For those of you following this blog, I apologize for my erratic posting lately. We are in the process of moving, and this weekend is the final deal. We are planning to be out by Sunday. Hopefully these e-mails will be more regular in a week or so. Thanks for your patience.

Matt. 23:25-26 "...You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

Have you ever washed dishes and just cleaned the outside of a bowl? Sounds ludicrous, because it is. The business of eating goes on inside the dish, not outside of it. The mess on the outside is just the matter that spills over. Jesus was hammering the Pharisees (religious leaders of his day) for their hypocricy, their willingness to appear clean on the outside while they harbored evil in their hearts. As I have gone through this diet, dealing with one emotion after another (more like all of them at once some days), I feel like the blind Pharisee. My hope is to get things in order on the outside, as if somehow the self-discipline and accomplishment will work from the outside inward, bringing me that much closer to becoming a balanced person. If I could just get those bad habits and loose ends all tied up, I might have it all together...

Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will also be clean. It's true. If you wash the inside of a dish, the water flows over the outside and the scrubbing of the inside results in a clean exterior. There are many issues in my heart that I don't wish to give up, many dark spots I don't wish to surrender. But it seems that the harder I cling to them, the less headway I make on this diet. My stubborn refusal to "Let go and Let God" keeps me trapped in my old habits, my old thoughts, and the emotional tailspins that make me want to break the diet.

Like the dish, the real business of eating goes on inside and the mess on the outside is just overflow.