I remember how I felt as a child eating school dinners. I suppose today free school meals served at school is not necessarily the norm, but it was normal in my childhood times, or even if they were not free, ‘dinner money’ was normally something you had to take to school. Unless it got stolen by the bullies, but that is another story. So I disliked tapioca and semolina intensely. And how it was served was little help. It came in a bowl with a dollop of jam. We called the tapioca ‘frog-spawn’, because it looked like that. We had to eat it or go hungry, and be in trouble too maybe. I chose to eat it, mostly. I remember the feeling of eating what did not taste nice. That resisting of the revulsion, gritting the teeth and succumbing to the fate. It was good food, but not too easy to eat. I sometimes get a similar feeling in following teachings. I believe the teacher, especially when it comes to Jesus Christ who teaches what I know I need for life which can be sustained towards eternal life. Yes, he had it right where many had it wrong, and he gave the teachings I know I need. I felt this way about him and his teachings from an early age when my mother taught them to me from what we called a children’s bible, a collection of biblical passages put into language for a child with pictures added. This ‘bible’ book preserved his teachings, excerpts of them, well enough for me to grasp them and believe in Jesus through them. So I believed. Then I had to learn more teachings. Sunday school and school assembly talks in a church school provided ongoing sources of the teachings and explanations. The explanations got better when I was university age. By then I had been interested enough to get baptised as a believer, having been raised a Baptist. I had various versions of the Bible to read and learn and refer to. I memorised parts of it. Then I could reflect on what I had memorised any time I wanted. So I believed, I heard. Did I follow? Do I follow? Following takes more. Here is where you eventually decide you know the teachings well enough to be sure you have a good grasp of their intended meaning. You have filtered out poor explanations given you, in favour of the better ones. You tie your preferred version of explanations and understanding of the teachings back to that early belief in the original teacher, Jesus, and his own appointed and chosen apostles, and to the Father who sent Jesus to teach and save. It all settles in your mind. Or so it seems in my experience. Now comes the crunch. There is that school dinner feeling. I have to actually accept the teachings if I am to follow the Lord who taught them, Jesus. It feels to me like eating tapioca. I do not like teachings I know will lead to changes in things I cherish. I know there will be difficulties because of them. Yet there they are, and I must choose. Eat, or refuse and go spiritually hungry and have trouble. But troubles come either way. Which kinds of troubles one way or the other, I must choose. It is really a daily thing. The teachings are in my mind and memory, and I am reminded often of them. But once I have a good grasp of their meaning, I must daily make that choice of accepting them if I can, to eat them and swallow them down, or leaving them ‘on my plate’, as it were. Taking up the cross daily. Knowing they are good, but come with some troubles and difficulties and the overcoming of a powerful opposition, but then accepting them with resolve to obey them when the opportunity and situation arises, that is the moment I feel like I did eating some kinds of dinners at school. Hopefully each day I will choose to follow. And find that it is actually Jesus who is choosing me. But either way, I do believe, and I keep the teachings in my head, letting my understanding of them grow, and fostering that understanding, and setting them ahead of all teachings. I want the eternal life they alone can bring: If I follow.
