All Good Things Must Come to an End

I’ve been listening to the proverbial old sayings that people employ quite often.  I find that I don’t have to listen for very long before someone comes forth with a maxim that’s supposed to be automatically accepted as truth.  One such saying is the one in the title of this post, “all good things must come to an end.”  Another such saying is, “when it rains, it pours.”  The interesting thing in so many of these commonly-employed sayings is that they’re basically negative in nature.  I keep hearing these universally-accepted “words of wisdom” that all have a negative bent to them!!!  Why is that?  What’s that say about us?

You could be downright cruel with the statement in the title of this post (attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer).  Someone could be telling you about something really good they’re enjoying these days and you could haul off and rain on their parade by reminding them not to get too excited because as everyone knows, all good things must come to an end.  Even if you do just turn the statement on yourself when something good in your life comes to an end (or seems to), it’s still pessimistic, pointing out the perceived inevitability of goodness always having a limited run.  What a lens through which to view life!

I suppose we adhere to a belief that this statement is true because we think about the certainty of death, which many think of as the coming to an end of a good thing (life on earth).  After all, as another one of those negative truisms goes, “nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

The part about the certainty of taxes isn’t in the Bible, but both the Old Testament and the New Testaments of the Bible would agree about the inevitability of death (Ecclesiastes 3:2, Hebrews 9:27).  But as far as death being the ultimate expression of “all good things must come to an end,” the New Testament, the gospel of Jesus, the resurrection celebrated at Easter, offers a different view.  That different perspective on all of life, giving a much more positive bent to this temporal life, is that for the person following Christ, all good things get even better.

Why Do You Eat?

I had a grandfather who used to say, “I don’t eat because I’m hungry, I eat to keep from getting hungry.”  Even if he was telling the truth, I don’t think that would be true of most of us.  Why do you eat?  Whenever you eat, it’s probably for one of the following reasons:

·        It’s time (according to the clock)

·        It’s time (according to the stomach – i.e. you’re hungry)

·        For comfort

·        You “deserve it”

·        You have a craving for a particular food or for something sweet or spicy or salty, etc.

There could be other reasons you eat, but really the thing I would ask you to consider is this, whenever you eat, for whatever reason you eat, why do you eat what you eat?  Do you eat what you eat primarily for the taste or for the nutrition?  Is the choice of what you’ll eat mostly driven by what will taste good to you, or what will be good for you?

As you contemplate that, think back in your history and consider, has that changed over time?  Regardless of how young or old you are, has the choice of what you’ll eat changed over time?  If so, in which direction have your choices changed, and why?

While that might be a fascinating conversation to have with ourselves, it led to me to see a connection between my choice in what I eat and my choice in what I’m after in life.  In my earlier years I ate what I would enjoy most, what tasted good in my mouth, and similarly, what I wanted out of life was to have fun, enjoy myself.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve started eating what provides the most health benefits, what’s good for me, and similarly what I want out of life is meaning, significance.

How about you?  Are these shifts I’ve noted just coincidental as we age, or, regardless of age, is there a connection to be made between what you want out of your food and what you want out of your life?  “You are what you eat” isn’t in the Bible, but I wonder if what we eat reflects what we are after?