At some point we need to learn to not deal with wasteful matters

Jim Honeycutt

Chaplain-Baptist Minister

Like a dog that returns to its vomit, so is a fool that is insane in his foolishness. Proverbs 26:11.

Curled upped in the chair beside me, she lays looking so peaceful. One couldn’t tell that just earlier she had been so miserable. Rita, as we call her, is a 14-year-old chihuahua that we have had since we liberated her from a dilapidated car filled with 10 or more other dogs. After seeing the plight of all those poor pups, I convinced her owner to let me buy at least one of them.

She was not my first rescued dog, nor is she the last, but she is the sweetest and most loving I have watched over. Scared of nearly anything that moves, she stays close, running away to her place of safety in a moment’s notice.

Oh, how she yearns to be held and loved on, giving little nibbles as she swings her tail with strong quick wags, that quicken as you speak to her. I stroke her little head, all the while speaking soft loving encouragement. You’re a sweetie I tell her, but you know you make yourself sick. Why do you do that?

Earlier as I worked in the back yard, she followed me around. Purposely, she would from time to time run ahead, only to turn running back to my side. One of the times she ran ahead she picked up the scent of her favorite treat. Making a bee line towards the side fence she left me. I didn’t give it much thought initially for my focus was on my task. Yet after a short while I gazed in her direction, instantly I realized what she was doing, but it was too late.

The prize she so greatly desired was already being devoured. I do my best to keep the backyard picked up, unfortunately sometimes I miss what the cat leaves behind. You would think as well as she is taken care of with only the best food and fresh water, added to that the organic natural treats given regularly, she would have lost her taste for cat droppings. Nope, not at all.

Even though they make her ill, she will search for them, a demented easter egg hunt. Gorging herself she chokes it down, all the while fighting to keep it in. It’s a disgusting sight that makes me sick just thinking about it. Thick yellow mucus mixed with cat waste she regurgitates. Each time eating once more what her body rejects. Unless I physically pick her up and remove her from the process, she will continue this behavior until it stays down.

Once done with her guilty pleasure — if that’s what it is — she lays around with a belly ache unable to move. In this case, before she finishes, I rescue her from the self-inflicted turmoil. Though some of the waste has settled in her stomach. Sitting here thinking about it, I see the futility of some of my own destructive behaviors. Things that I do that I know the outcome long before I start. Things that make me sick. Maybe not physically, but impact my mental, emotional, and most importantly my spiritual health.

In this I know I am not alone. We all struggle with behaviors that are counter to what we are taught in Scripture. Prosperity in this life doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing through it. Just as being rescued from a terrible situation doesn’t guarantee complete liberation from self-destructive acts. Rita, my chihuahua, has been given a life that is filled with love with no worries of food or water shortage, nor threat from lack of care. Yet she foolishly, insanely, returns to fulfill her deprived appetite.

I am struck by the thought that our country spiritually seems to be in the same boat. We have been given so much prosperity by our Creator. So many of us have been freed from an existence of enslavement to the destructive acts of the flesh. Yet like little Rita, we return to gorge ourselves on the waste of the world. Actions once hidden in the darkest corners of society are now flaunted in the open like treasures on display. They are not treasures. They are the manifestations of a world that denies the authority of its Creator.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ and His redeeming grace, then how can this be? How can one walk both in the world identifying with its twisted perversions of truth and the cleansing blood of Jesus’s sacrifice? To the unbeliever it becomes easier and easier to stomach the subtle seductions of the world’s garbage.

Until one day when gorging of such waste not only fills their spiritual belly, it becomes their only diet. May The Lord remove us from the temptations of partaking in the fallen fruits of the world.