Have You Grown Up Enough Spiritually to Feed Yourself?

I grew up the youngest of three little tomboys living at the end of a long dirt road in the Louisiana Delta with my beauty queen Mama and farming Papa. Our playground was the great outdoors. We found something to love in every season, and fall was certainly no exception.

How well I remember the cool autumn afternoons of my youth and getting off the big yellow school bus that lumbered down Bull Run Road. My sisters and I couldn’t get out of our school clothes, into our play clothes, and back outdoors fast enough to suit us. Sometimes we got to go to the fields to stomp cotton for Papa. Other times there’d be a trailer of cotton calling to us from Papa’s equipment shed.  In the field, playing was mixed with working. We had to make sure the cotton was stomped well and packed down tight before Papa came back with another load. But a trailer of cotton under the shed—that was pure fun. It was wide open for hours of unstructured imaginative play. We’d jump, dive, and dig in that cotton until our stomachs worked up a healthy appetite and started growling, signaling supper time and more of Mama’s good country cooking.

Our biggest problem was that mealtime didn’t run on our schedule. It ran on Mama’s, regardless of how many times we went to the kitchen door to ask, “Is supper ready?” My belly is aching just thinking about it. It didn’t matter how hungry we were, we weren’t eating until Mama put the food on the table and called us in. I don’t remember the first time I realized that I was old enough to decide it was lunchtime whenever I wanted it to be lunchtime, but I can tell you that I like it, and I imagine you do, too Growing up sure has its advantages!

So, tell me. Have you grown up spiritually since you first believed in Jesus or are you still waiting for others to feed you out of God’s Word? Bible studies are great, podcasts are wonderful, and I love me a good sermon! But the glory of Immanuel, God with us, is that we don’t have to be dependent on others for a word that will feed us, that will lift our spirits and bring comfort during stressful circumstances. The Bread of Life has been prepared for all eternity. Come on, folks. Let’s open our Bibles, grow up, and feed ourselves!

“I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able,” (1 Cor. 3.2).

Shellie Rushing Tomlinson is the author of the award-winning nonfiction humor titles Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On and Sue Ellen’s Girl Ain’t Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy! She is a popular blogger and speaker, and the host of the radio program All Things Southern LIVE. Tomlinson loves sharing humor and hope with audiences across the country. She and her husband have two grown children. They live and farm in Louisiana.

Photograph © Toa Heftiba, used with permission