Chomping on Air

“Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy? 

Listen to me, listen well: 

Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest." 

Isaiah 55:2 The Message

The smell of cotton candy. Take a deep breath and...ahhhh. I mean, it is just magical.

You can hardly ignore it.
Even if you don't like to eat it, when that sweet aroma hits you in the face, you stop and look around to see where it's coming from. 

And you want some.

Maybe your mouth is watering even now thinking about that pink or blue bag of fluffy goodness.

It's the fun food stuff that we eat at parties and amusement parks and fairs.
It's the fluff we shell out lots of money for to bring smiles and instant gratification.

But while that sweetness may entice my senses and tickle my taste buds, I have never heard someone say, "Man! I can't eat another bite! I am just so FULL from that cotton candy!"

When my stomach is growling from true hunger, empty and needing fuel, this air puffed,  artificially flavored sugar is not what I am grasping for.

Why? Because it doesn't truly satisfy.

It doesn't meet my need for nourishment, for strength, for sustanence...it only masks my hunger momentarily. 

It keeps me longing, and searching...chomping on air, hoping to be filled.

And so it goes with life.

We spend our time and energy on artificially flavored, never filling fluff.

We choose the brief moments of sugary good over the eternal life giving abundance of our God.

We grab bags of pretty colored, sweet smelling air and call it nutrition, only to find it disappeared on our tongues, our hands sticky and stained, our stomachs still painfully empty.

We labor to stock our shelves with these candy clouds, then drag ourselves to the cubbard weak with hunger only to find inedible hardened mounds of useless sugar.

There is a drastic difference between good things and God things.

"Listen to me, listen well: 

Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest...listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words."

Let's stop settling for some version of nourishment.

Let's stop reaching for what tastes sweet in the moment, but leaves a chasm in your soul.

The Lord tells us that what He offers- grace, unfailing love, abundant life, eternal life- all of it is free! 

It satisfies, strengthens, sustains, directs and protects.

It never leaves you wanting.

So what's your go to fluff?

What is stock piled in your cabinet?

What are your reaching for to satisfy? 

Accomplishments? Accolades? Position? Grades? Relationship? Addictive substances? Food? Friendships? Control? 

And the list goes on...

The shelf life of all those things is ridiculously temporary, the sweetness painfully brief.

The shelf life of what God is offering you: eternal.

What are you spending your life on?

Choose only the finest. 

Don't settle for good things...choose GOD things.

It isn't always easy when life fills your senses with cotton candy lures...

But nothing satifies like Jesus. 

Nothing.

Let's stop taking the bait.

No more chomping on air.

"Taste and see that the Lord is good. 

Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!"

Psalms 34:8 NLT