Monday, October 09, 2017

The Curse of Canned Convenience







Soups can be super-simple. You walk into the pantry, grab a can, peel the lid open, pour it into a microwavable bowl and heat it on HIGH for 2:30. 

Voila! Your soup is ready!

For some of us, that's the only kind of soup we know, and we love it. A life-saver for busy moms and dads.

It's convenient. 

It's easy.

It tastes fine.  (My mom would disagree. She would rather be caught dead then eat canned soup!)
  
Canned soups are wonderful inventions, I tell myself.

But, some questions remain unanswered.

First of all, do you even know the person who made the soup? What did he or she put in it? How long ago was it made? The expiration date on the bottom of the can years out makes me even more nervous. Imagine a bowl of soup that sits on the pantry shelf for two years???  Would I even consider consuming something like that??!?

Still, canned soups are wonderful inventions for busy, distracted, rushed, on-the-go thoughtless lives we live.  I consume those on semi-regular basis, just like I do the pithy inspirational quotes that pop up in my Facebook newsfeed. They are just enough to take the edge of my soul hunger to keep me from working up a healthy appetite for truly nourishing food. 

They keep me sated, mildly sedated, vaguely unsatisfied and generally unmotivated to sink my teeth into anything of real substance.



Like the mass produced, mass consumed shareable content, a can of soup may fill up my stomach but it leaves me hungry everywhere else. It may silence my growling innards, but leave my body anemic, soul impoverished, and my heart and spirit severely, acutely malnourished. 

It is amazing to me that such conditions can exist on every level of society, regardless of the religious or political orientation, in what is deemed the riches country in the world...

Nobody, I mean, nobody is exempt. 


You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat. Matthew 5:6

No comments: