FRIED PIES BEFORE CHURCH?

Reading through the proverbs again, I am once more impressed how poignant a proverb can be. Portions of Proverbs 30:8-9 proclaim: "give me neither poverty nor riches;...Lest I be full and deny thee." The wiseman observed that those who prosper most often veer from serving and respecting God and even, the word would apply, turn against Him. I am aware that the proverb is speaking primarily of material prosperity. However, it is true with anything one indulges himself. If one is full of something other than God, he has no room for, interest in, desire for God. People receive little of God at church, not because there is so little available, but because so many are so full of other things there is no room left for Him. Even if there were room, the person sees no need for God. While in elementary school, I would walk home from school and go immediately to my grandparents house. Their house was through our backyard on the parallel street. Each day my grandparents would have something for me to go to the corner store to get for them. I realize now they were often just creating a need to give me the opportunity to go. See, if I went to get them something at the store, I got to get me something for going for them. I would get a soda pop and candy bar or ice cream bar or cracker jacks or fruit-filled fried pie. Yum. A school boy is ravenous after getting home. I would make the purchases and then eat my pie and drink my coke as I watched a little black and white TV that hung over the ice cream freezer. It made for an anticipated daily event. There was one problem. My dad got home from work not long after I got home from school. Having had an early breakfast and lunch, he was ready to eat when he got home. Thus, we had supper around 4:30 when he arrived. After my visit to the corner store, my appetite had been temporary curbed. It seems like every time I had overindulged on fried pies, we would have mash potatoes for supper. They seemed the hardest to get down when one was already full. In fact, they seemed to grow as you wollered them in your mouth. Every time my mother nailed me, "You've been eating right before supper when you went to the store for Grandpa and Grandma, haven't you?" "How did you know, I inquired with the mash potatoes I had inserted in my mouth ten minutes ago escaping from its corners. Being full, I had no appetite for supper however wonderful it might have been. When folks have no appetite for God at church, it makes one wondered how many fried pies he's eaten-how much of the junk food of world he has been indulging in that he has no appetite for God.