Drinking Down Simple Pleasures

Back when I was 18, life was pretty rough. Sometimes I wanted to go up to the nearest tree, get a rope, and hang myself. Two convictions kept me from it....1) first, boy that would really hurt, (2) I had a philosophical conviction that suicide was intrinsically wrong.

One of the few things I would look forward to after another depressing day at school was a quart of chocolate milk and reading the newspaper. Despite all of the misery I was wallowing in, chocolate milk lifted my spirits.

Maybe the Theobromine functioned as a natural mood-elevating Prozac. I don't know. My quart of daily chocolate milk drinking ceased when my mom complained about the amount of milk I was drinking. To be fair, I didn't explain to her the therapeutic benefits of the chocolate milk. But, she knew that I liked it so it wasn't entirely a mystery that it was something I appreciated. I felt kind of like, "Man, can't a kid even drink milk a little extra milk around here?" Seriously.

I have a strange attraction to beverages in general. I am a Drinkie rather than a Foodie. Specifically, beer, coffee, and chocolate milk. It is the whole experience of consumption, not just one element or another. I heartily endorse moderation, as one sure way not to appreciate something one loves is to go overboard. The more becomes less in some paradoxical formula.

When David longed for the water from the wells of Bethlehem and his men, unknowingly to David, risked their lives to get some-- and then David poured it out because he wanted his men to realize that they were more important to him than water--it must have caused a tinge of sadness. I am sure that when he was king he had some of those waters brought to him. It reminded him of being a shepherd boy and drinking deeply from the wells of his hometown after a long day of shepherding sheep. Or slaying a giant who defied the living God.

There is a need to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Often in the pursuit of the ecstatic, we take for granted the everyday which is only ordinary because God has graced us with so many good gifts that we take them as a given and we receive them like robots rather than counting them anew individually.

As I write, I finish a quart of chocolate milk. It reminds me of God's faithfulness.      



     

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