Dear Annie,

Today is market day, and mothers just like you and me are always delighted to see the bounty of God’s provision in the market. There is one lesson which i want to share with you. A lesson we can learn in the marketplace.

Mothers going to the market today will see wonders of God’s creation. In the market are myriads of things beautiful. Fruits are of various kinds, luscious, and newly-picked. Fishes are so fresh, their eyes sparkling and they come in small and big sizes, offering a variety of  tastes. Pork, and beef and chicken are spread nicely and they seem to tell you “buy me”, for indeed God appointed them as food for men. All the food items we see are arranged attractively in the stalls, to be bought, eaten, and nourish our physical bodies.

But there is one thing common in all the foods that we see in the market. They have all been cut-off  from their life-giving source. The farmers picked the ripened pineapple, papaya and watermelon, and in that very moment, “they die”. Fishes as soon as they are taken out of  water, die.  Pigs and chickens and cows are slaughtered even before dawn to provide us protein for good health.

While it is morbid to think this way, yet all the food items we see in the market are happy to have served their purposes to supply life to mankind. God provides for our physical well-being, as He provided Manna  for the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years.  God provides for all men, good and evil. But note that no matter how delicious and abundant the food that we eat are, they only nourish the physical body. And this physical body will die.

The real food is spiritual. If there is death in order to nourish us physically, there is also death to nourish us spiritually. Christ freely offered His life. Like the vendors in the market He is calling us:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” “Isaiah 55:1 (ESV)

Christ offer is all the best there is. He is calling us to buy, even if we don’t have money because salvation is by grace.

Come now. Buy without money and live… eternally.

As you delight in buying food supply, i am sure you will also enjoy cooking them for your family.

Kisses,

Tita Haydee