1 Corinthians  6:19-20 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

The context of this verse is dealing with sexual immorality, which is a serious issue and one handled at length by God. However, when I read this passage today – it struck me in a different way. These verses brought to mind ,weight, body image, self-worth & eating habits. My struggle in life revolves around food, not sex. In pondering the idea of my body not being my own relating to food, I thought of something I hadn’t before. What would I feed God? Obviously, I love creating delicious things. I love eating them too. Frequently I eat stuff that isn’t very good for me. And large quantities of it. Which, really is the problem. The quantity, not the food itself. “A little of what you fancy” as my mom says – meaning, have just a little bit of whatever, and you’ll be much less likely of getting on the deprivation/binge roller coaster. Anyway, back to the point. If God was living with me (which, He is)…and He was eating exactly the same thing as me, would I change my habits? Um, yeah! Are the things I’m consuming honoring the Lord? Recently the answer to that would be a big “no”.

It’s an interesting idea that’s bouncing around in my head because of this scripture. What if I ate as if I was feeding God? Instead of obsessively counting calories or convincing myself that it’s ok to have 3 more slices/cookies/servings, I’d just eat food as fuel. Savoring tastes but not overindulging. Enjoying what I eat, without making it what I worship. On the flip side, I probably wouldn’t treat food like it is the bad guy either. It’s just food. Amoral. It’s what I do with it that matters.  I’ve always just kind of glossed over this scripture in the past. Taken the whole sexual sin thing and figured I could skip it. My body struggles are just as much a misuse of God’s temple as someone engaging in blatant affairs. Even as I write that, I’m arguing with myself. Surely packing around a little extra weight because I’ve had no self-control with food couldn’t possibly equate to “really bad” sexual sins. Right? But the scripture before this says “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”. For me, bad food boundaries are a sin against my body. I get moody, grumpy, depressed and angry when I’ve lost control of my eating habits. It literally is a daily struggle. And when I’m losing that battle – it overshadows pretty much everything else in my life.

What would happen if instead of over analyzing my food and fighting against my own cravings, I just reminded myself that I’m the Lord’s temple. That anything I eat should be pleasing and honoring to Him. I wonder how that would change my attitude? What if, instead of imagining myself in a size smaller pants, I envisioned feeding God whatever I was about to consume myself? Huh. I’m not saying this is good theology. Or any kind of deep spiritual truth. But it certainly caught my attention as I did my devotion today. I think I’ll try it and see how it goes. Worst case scenario is that I find out God really doesn’t like cheese.