Your Eyes Are Bigger

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

Your Eyes Are Bigger

                Those of us who have had the pleasure of growing up around our grandparents and great-grandparents can say we are blessed. There are so many memories of sitting on the back porch watching my grandfather whittle or sitting at a table while my grandmother makes me try butterbeans. I told her I didn’t like them, but admitted I had never tried them. That was all the ammo she needed to sit me down and educate me.

I was exposed to a great deal of wisdom when I was hanging out with my Granny and Papa. One of my favorite parts of the day was the evening meal – supper as they called it. I would load up my plate with all the great tasting food my grandmother would cook. Papa would look at me and say, “Boy, your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” He was always right, as I couldn’t finish all I had dished out.

There is another adage that sticks in my brain I learned way back when, and that is, “Never go to the store hungry or to a restaurant extremely hungry.” That is so true. If you go to the store in this condition, you’ll get home with all kinds of things you didn’t intend to buy, and the restaurant menu is a smorgasbord. When I go to the latter in this condition, I can never finish all I had ordered. I guess I will never learn.

All of this overeating, over-buying, or even over-shopping is just an example of being tempted. The pictures on the menu look so delicious and the model in the sales circular makes the clothes look the way we want to look. These temptations and more are all around us. We’re hit with ads showing the perfect body, the perfect hair, the perfect car, and so on. We would need to be billionaires to afford all the items of temptation we see all the time.

Spiritual temptation is no different. We get the picture of an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other, each whispering in the closest ear trying to tempt us while the other urging us to resist. It is a real battle and is no joke.

Anything we do which is not in God’s wishes for us is hurtful to Him. Another way to put this is anything we place between us and God which is contrary to His desires for us is a sin, pure and simple. We can try to call it something else, but it is still sin. We can’t successfully resist temptation on our own. 1Corinthians 6:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

So, the next time you feel like your eyes are drawing you to places God does not want for you, through His faithfulness He will help you stay under His umbrella of Grace!