Recently I read where a person named Stacey Irvine ate almost nothing but chicken nuggets for almost 15 years.  She never tasted fruits or vegetables.  She occasionally supplemented her diet with French fries.  One day her tongue started to swell and she couldn't catch her breath.  She was rushed to the hospital, her airway was forced open, and they stuck an IV in her arm to start pumping the nutrients she needed.  After saving her life, the medical staff sent her home, but not before they warned her that she needed to change her diet or prepare herself for an early death.

  I've heard people call it a famine.  A famine of knowing the Bible.  During a famine people waste away for lack of sustenance, some people die.  Those who remain need nourishment; they need to be revived.  And if they have any hope of remaining over time, their life situation has to change in conspicuous ways.

  During normal famines people don't have access to the food they need.  but Stacey Irvine could have eaten anything she wanted.  she had resources, opportunity and presumably all the encouragement she needed to eat well.  Can you imagine what would happen if all of us decided to follow her example and discontinued eating all but non-nutritious food stuff?  If we happened to beat the odds and live, we undoubtedly would suffer in the long run from nutrition related chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.  Like Stacey Irvine, we are starving ourselves to death.  It's surely not a lack of resources; nevertheless we are starving ourselves to death.

  Christians used to be known as the "people of one book".  they may have read other books, but the book they cared about more than all the others combined was the Bible.  They memorized it, meditated on it, and taught it to others.  We don't do that like we should anymore, and in a very real sense we are starving ourselves to death.

  I appreciate those who are reading the Bible through.  It is our life and nourishment.

Praying for you,

Pastor Ritchey