How's your diet?

This is a picture of Teddi, who has developed a new habit of lying on my Bibles and playing with my pens when I'm having quiet time in the mornings. This morning, however, his presence was rather appropriate, as I was reading in Hebrews chapter five, verses 11 - 14.

At the end of last year, when a stray cat began coming to my door, I named her Tamba, and a friend joked with me that this was the acronym for the Twins And Multiple Births Association. Little did I know then that a multiple birth would take place in my own bedroom and that we'd soon find ourselves with four lively kittens in the house. Six months later, the two kittens who are still with me have grown very fast, and Teddi is now bigger than his mother, Tamba, as you can see in the middle picture below.

I've been just a little concerned that this big boy and his sister are still drinking milk from mummy. This means, of course, that Tamba continues to eat enough food for a nursing mother, and all this extra nutrition is not doing her "figure" any good. This week, I tried to discourage the milk-drinking by putting a sock tube around Tamba's middle so that the kittens couldn't get to a teat. But Tamba wasn't at all impressed and, once my back was turned, she managed to wriggle out of it again.

And so it seemed strangely appropriate that Teddi settled down beside me when I was reading Hebrews 5 this morning. Verses 11 - 14 speak about Christians who are slow to grow in God, and who continue to drink spiritual "milk" instead of moving on to the solid food of all the more mature teaching that is found in the Word of God.

What is your diet like? Do you simply return to your favourite Bible passages again and again? Or are you making sure that you are feeding on the whole Bible, in the both the Old and the New Testaments? It's easy to avoid parts that seem harder to understand, but it's so exciting and encouraging when God speaks truth to us through those parts too.

Well, it's not that Teddi and Tobi don't eat plenty of solid cat food; they do eat plenty of that, but they still keep returning for some "baby milk" now and then. And perhaps it's true that we as Christians also need to go "back to basics" from time to time, and be reminded of simple truths - like how much God loves us, and how Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven.

As you and I read our Bibles this month, I pray that we'll have a "balanced diet" and that we will all continue to grow in our friendship with God.