Be careful about what goes in (Wednesday, Week 5, Year 1)

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The second account of creation (cf. Gen. 2:4-9. 15-17) fleshes out the details of the creation of the human person. First, God formed man of dust from the ground. At this stage, “man” was not yet a living being; it was just a mere statue made from dust. The transformation of the statue into a living soul/being happened when God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of the statue. Thereafter, a simple command was given: Man, be free to eat of every tree of the garden, but don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is capable of bringing about your death. Man received life from the breath of God which went into him and was warned that he would die by what would go into him (the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil).


We eat to live, but not everything that we eat is capable of giving us life. If we eat orange, we receive some vitamins for healthy life. If we eat poisoned or spoilt food, we ingest pathogens capable of killing us. If what goes into the stomach affects our physical health, then what goes into our hearts can affect our spiritual health. And that is why man was told to eat of every tree but was warned to avoid the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a forbidden fruit which could attract deadly spiritual consequences if eaten. In Mark 7:14-23, Jesus made it very clear that while food is good for the body, it is what the heart receives and processes that can bring about defilement and spiritual death.


Many of us are stuck in particular sinful habits because of what we have consistently allowed into our hearts through the senses. As much as we make efforts to avoid poisoned foods for the sake of our physical health, we must also make more efforts to avoid other poisons that can badly affect our spiritual health. The heart is like a nursery in which seeds for our spiritual/moral growth are planted. If junk is allowed into the heart, there will be some sort of pollution and suffocation which will surely lead to spiritual death or moral decay.       


Prayer:

May our hearts be clean, pure and prepared to bear good fruits of righteousness, Amen!


Have a FRUITFUL day!



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