As you may have guessed, the divine diet is not about eating solid food.  The divine diet is about feeding our soul with the Spirit.  So often, we look for something to “take off the edge,” something to help us get through whatever we are growing through, something to comfort us.  We keep eating or drinking or indulging in other fleshly pursuits that can never satisfy us because the “something” that we are really looking for is not in the physical. 

What we are looking for is God.  What we are trying to find is the balance that we need in order to embrace mind, body and soul.

In the book of Exodus, God told Moses “I will rain down bread from heaven for you” (Exodus 16:4 NIV).  God said “at twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread” and the manna, this bread, filled the camp where the Israelites stayed, and everyone gathered “just as much as they needed” (Exodus 16:17).  The scripture says that the Israelites ate manna for the entire forty years that they were in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35). 

Jesus reminds us of God’s abundance when he says in Matthew 6:25, 33 – do not worry about what you shall eat or what you shall drink or you shall wear but seek God’s kingdom first and his righteousness, and all these things will be added as well.

In the states, we benefit from the joy of God’s abundance is everywhere present. 

But we allow ourselves to be distracted by flesh and fulfillment of physical desires because they are easier to feed than what we are really seeking to feed.  What we are really seeking to do is to nourish the soul.  

The most important manna that God is always feeding us is spiritual food.  When we allow Spirit to feed us with love, we realize that we are not hungry.  When we focus on the Spirit, we satisfy our deepest desire, which is not food, or drink, or drugs, or sex, or whatever you allow yourself to be distracted by in the flesh.  What we are really trying to feed is our desire to know God.

In Conscious Eating, Gay Hendricks talks about his journey of spiritual fitness, during which he asked himself whether every bite he took was feeding Spirit or was a hidden desire to over-indulge. 

My body, mind and soul cries out for this practice of learning to feed the soul rather than mindlessly feeding the body.  Many of us work hard; sit long hours; strive to achieve the absolute good that will bring us true happiness.  But in our efforts to succeed, we miss the true meaning of success.  Success is the moment that we realize that we are one with God. 

Instead of embracing the simplicity of success, we allow the fear of not succeeding worry us every moment that we work.  In fact, we worry so much that we begin to dwell in its energy and allow anxiety to fill our fears with food.  Food, I think, will make me feel better.  So I eat, forgetting that manna is not to be overindulged.   I eat, failing to notice that what I really want to do is love myself in this moment, to be embraced by the presence of God, and to feed the soul rather than the body.

John 14:20 is my favorite scripture, which speaks to the greatness of God’s good that is always feeding us, always nourishing us, always sustaining us with grace.

In John 14:20, Jesus says “I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” 

If Jesus is in the Father and Jesus is in us, then we, too, are in the Father.  We forget who we are in.  We forget that we are in the dynamic energy of a universe that is greater than this world, this illusion, this limitation of flesh.

Dear Father, thank you for feeding me.  Thank you for providing me.  Thank you for giving me everything that I need – every nutrient, every vitamin, every mineral.  Thank you God for the sun shining in you, the water streaming through you, and the winds blowing through your endless channels. 

Thank you for your daily blessing of manna from which I am always fed.  Thank you for feeding me perfect peace.  I slow down, and I stop worrying about the appearances of things.  I now know that you are the deliciousness that I savor.  In you, there is no need to push past the point of being full because my good – that point at which I am one with you – is in every breath that I breathe. 

Thank you for the kingdom in me which embraces me, and sings me, and fills me with your eternal presence.

Thank you for my divine diet of Spirit, which will give my soul the love that it needs to grow in you. 

You bring me who I need, take me to where I want to go and feed me what I need to be fed. 

Thank you for giving me a new vision this summer: the divine diet.  We will continue to study the divine diet: how to be fed without excess calories and cravings but with so much good that it will overflow beyond fleshly desire into perfect divine order – so that we can have our spiritual “cake of life,” and eat it too.