Da Word... 232! What goes in will come out

I've heard some stories about people swallowing some insaaaaane things.  What they fail to remember is that if the body can't digest it..... someway or another, it's going to be coming out!  And in some cases, that coming out may not be too comfortable.... ahem..... if you know what I mean.  The point though is this, anything we take into our bodies will certainly be expressed, even if transformed, and will have a rippling impact.

 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.

- J (Matthew 12:35)

In this passage, my man J (Jesus) is verbally whippin' some Pharisees into shape.  I mean, these guys did not know who they were trying to step in the ring with.  Here's my man J, healing some people, and in come the Pharisees attempting to attribute his good to the work of evil incarnate!  Ludicrous... so J took off the gloves and, in the process, conveyed a great truth.  What one fills himself or herself with will most certainly express itself in leaps and bounds.

It's all about perspective.  Two people can look at the same situation and interpret or act upon it in completely different ways.  And that response has to do with one's body of experience.  The verse above speaks to the extremes.  But of course we know there is always gray.  However the point is clear, we are what we eat.  Think about it, if all you ever do is ethical, humble, compassionate, encouraging, committed, and passionate, such actions will affect your thinking!  You will have trained your mind to operate in a certain way, and now it's straight muscle memory.  Like in any physical activity, you do enough reps of a certain maneuver and it becomes second nature.  You perform without even having to think about it.  In the same way, whenever something new comes around, your mind has already been trained to snap into a mode of approaching the new experience with the great perspective you've trained it to use.

Now if you always teeter on the edge, that thin line between what's right and what's not, you will soon enough train your mind to always operate in that fuzzy area.  And if you tend to step over that line, pretty soon it won't take much to push you over. It is true, bad company will most certainly corrupt good character.  Even if a person appears to be a pillar (and it only works if his or her beliefs are anchored into something much greater than he or she), if that individual's common experience 24/7 is with bad company, the probability still exists that that person's thinking could be altered for the worse.  Pretty soon, those gray areas no longer seem all that gray, and stepping over the line no longer seems like such a bad thing.  The transformation is subtle. You never know it until one day, BAM!  It hits you square in the face. But alas, you are already in too deep.

It's about perspective my friends.  And we can change our perspective.  All we gotta do is change or augment our eating habits.  Who do you wish to become?  What kind person do you want to be?  Do you wanna be the line stepper?  Or that inspiring leader?  It boils down to one question that we should ask ourselves weekly:

What am I eating?

G-bless,

  - patrick