From A Garden To A Grocery Store

Imagine this:

• Not having to think about what ingredients are in your food
• Being filled by the food you eat, instead of having to take serving after serving, to feel full, and not addicted to the next bite
• Being well-nourished by the food you eat
• Not feeling guilty by what you just ate

Remember Sunday dinners at Grandma’s? I don’t know about you, but for me, they consisted of a meat, potato, a vegetable, and rolls. And homemade pie, of course! That’s the life I grew up in. And that’s how my mom still cooks, and that’s how I personally, want to cook.

God-made food. Not man-made, just human hands, taking what God had already made, and preparing it into nourishing meal.

You see, when God created the world, He gave us everything we needed to sustain life. But then brokenness entered the world and since then, much has been altered because of it. Even our food. Food has now been made more convenient, more processed, and more inexpensive (this is a perceived lie), due to the fact that we are eating chemicals instead of food. Just look at our grocery stores! If you question that distinction, just look at some food labels. If you can’t read the ingredient, it’s probably not real food.

And yet here we are. Moving further away from a garden and closer to a grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely beauty in a grocery store, especially when we, personally, live on a postage stamp of a yard and don’t have the ability to grow all of the food we need to sustain us. We can’t raise cattle and animals, we don’t have a large enough garden for vegetables, and surely not enough room for fruit trees. But I don’t want convenience to lend its way to complacency, assuming that this is how it’s supposed to be.

Have I bought food out of convenience? You betchya. But I can’t help but wonder, have we deviated far from God’s original intent for food? Should I be questioning what the garden should look like and what our food system looks like now? What WAS God’s original intent?

Thinking back to my Mom and Grandma, I grew up eating canned meat, speedy spuds (potatoes), and fresh veggies from the garden or frozen from the previous year’s crop. My parents taught me that food was nourishment. My dad was a dairy farmer, so envision physical labor all day, every day, with needing to replenish what he spent. My mom made the most terrific meals with substance, offering what we needed to nourish us for the days ahead. Oh how convenience has gotten the best of us!

So how do we try to get back to how God originally intended us to live?

Here’s my ONE tip: START SMALL.That’s it. Choose ONE thing.

Choose ONE item and choose “better”, whether it be your canned soups, meats you buy, meals you make, just choose ONE thing to change. Maybe it’s something you usually bought in a box and now can make yourself. Maybe it’s finding that boxed item and finding a healthier version of it. Maybe it’s making something homemade. Maybe it’s choosing something that’s not convenient, but choosing something that you know what’s in it..

Just choose ONE THING. ONE thing that brings you closer to the garden, rather than conveniences that grocery stores bring? In doing so, you are stepping in closer to what God has made.

You will never do this perfectly and neither will I. But let the process bring you closer to God, as you ask HIM, “how can I live more closely to how you originally designed me to live?” It’s amazing what you might hear Him saying , if you tune in close enough!

How do you feel about stepping into grocery stores these days? What are your thoughts?