Of Porridge and Faith

There some strange things that perplex.

Have you ever wondered why porridge remains hot for hours without cooling yet tea loses its heat so quickly?

How is it that soup also never cools when you are in a hurry?

Coming from the slopes of Mount Kenya, that is a paradox many people have.

When you go to the fringes of human settlement close to the top, it is very cold that many times there are snowflakes on the grass in the morning.

Not only that, but tea gets cold before you drain the cup yet it was taken straight from the pot.

Yet it’s not the same with porridge which maintains its heat for hours on end.

Today I got to look at the differences between the two (soup, especially from meat products, is in the same category with porridge)

Porridge will create an impermeable film on its surface that blocks heat from dissipating. This then operates as a thermal insulator that will block any heat loss. And it will repeat the same any time the film is removed.

That is how it is able to maintain its heat.

Tea is different. And it is not because of its viscosity since soup has about the same as tea.

Tea does not have that aspect, meaning that convection will very quickly make it adjust to the outside temperature.

And ugali, though in composition just like porridge, also lacks that because it is one solid mass that has no capacity of creating such a film.

I have never heard of vacuum flasks for porridge, unless someone is travelling for a long distance or wanting to take the same much later in the day. Yet we even have cups that are actual flasks to allow someone to enjoy a hot cup of tea for longer.

Then I looked at believers.

How was it that Daniel and his three friends were able to stand for their faith when the other princes did not see the need? How was Ezra able to execute the faith of teaching God’s law yet he was born and raised in captivity? How was Obadiah able to continue serving God yet he was a key staff in Ahab and Jezebel’s court? How was Nehemiah, a eunuch, able to stand for his faith and nation when he was so central to a heathen court? And how were Barnabas and Paul so instrumental to the Gospel reaching the nations yet they were raised in heathen nations? And how was Apollos mighty in the scriptures yet he was born and raised far from the centre of his faith?

How is it that a believer can remain relevant as the lone voice of the church in a hostile environment when another can’t be trusted to travel with an unbeliever? Why is it possible for one to evangelize amidst crippling persecution while another is ashamed of being called a believer amongst his peers? How can a wife remain the salt and light to her family when her husband is a son of Belial? How can a son reach his family with Christ’s love when his father is a priest of devils?

It is because of a fire within, a fire that that is protected from the pollution of the outside world. The outside world cannot be able to penetrate the guard they have over their heart and faith.

Like porridge, they will immediately reconstruct another shield when the first one is punctured.

The ones who are unable to trust themselves for an hour with someone of the opposite sex, those who are unable to trust themselves when they see some stray money, those unable to escape the allure of filthy lucre, and many other situations are like tea, sweet to the taste yet unable to maintain its heat that it must always be shielded from the outside world to thrive in their faith.

Or haven’t you met people who were so on fire for Christ when they were in school or college who became enemies of the cross when they joined the working world? Haven’t you met people who were leaders of their churches at home or where the flask was present who became whoremongers and harlots when they moved to a place nobody knew them?

I read about a flower that is found around coal mines. It is interesting that it is spotlessly white, always, yet it is surrounded, nay, swamped, probably strangled by the dust and soot from those mines. You can’t remain clean in or around a coal mine even for a few minutes.

Why it is able to maintain its spotlessly white exterior is a question people wonder about.

It has created a mechanism (if I may call it that) that makes the coal simply slide off its surface.

It is like the geese and ducks that are clean however dirty the water they swim in is yet a swine becomes as murky as the water it loves to play around.

I trust you are getting my drift because that is where I want to start from.

It is the inside that determines how we come out after our interaction with our environment. We are therefore the sole determinants of the outcome of those interactions; meaning that we are accountable to God for how we will come out.

Proverbs 4: 23 instructs us to guard our hearts. And why? It is the wellspring of life.

Jesus also said that it is out of the heart that everything springs from. Our hearts are the source of all the sins we commit. It is also the source of all the righteous acts we do.

He also said that springs of water will flow from our hearts once we drink the water that He gives us.

It is therefore the state of the heart that determines whether I am porridge or tea as per my analogy.

How we guard them from the pollution of the world (since we can’t run away from the world) will have a direct bearing on how our spiritual lives turn out.

Not only that. It will determine my overflow. By that I mean it will determine whether I am releasing living water or scum since I can’t release what is not in me. And this because I am always releasing something, the something that my heart is producing.

What is it that will keep me hot for long? I know someone is asking.

What are you feeding on? What is your spirit ingesting?

They word have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against Thee (Psalm 119: 11)

God’s word is not only the film that protects our inside from the corruption of the world but also the fire that maintains our spiritual temperature.

Not only that. It is also the fire that makes me affect the spiritual temperature of my surroundings.

I do not need to be protected from my surroundings to thrive and expand if the fire of the word is inside me. The fire in me must change the temperature of everything around me.

That is where Mordecai and Esther and Daniel and Nehemiah and Joseph ben Jacob operated from.

That was how Obadiah, a palace insider, could rescue a hundred prophets from the same palace seeking to kill them. That was how Moses, a prince in Egypt, could leave all that comfort to take on the assignment of freeing Israel from the same palace, this time as an enemy.

Their experiences are inconceivable were they to be taken normally. It is like expecting a hot cup of tea on its own at the North pole. Yet that is what these and many other characters were like. They thrived contrary to everything around them.

How consistently are you ingesting God’s word into your system? How seriously are you operating according to the same? How much is the same word changing or even affecting you?

What evidence can a prosecutor give if you were accused of living by the word of God?

That is what I was driving at.

But porridge does not remain hot forever. It can only remain hot for so long and then gradually, however slow it might be, it will take the temperature of its surroundings.

Our Christian lives are not much different. We must maintain the fire if we must remain hot.

I am sure the church in Laodicea did not start lukewarm. But they slowly and gradually started losing their fire to their surroundings.

It is possible they did not even realise the same until Christ pointed it out to them.

I am sure the church in Ephesus started with a blazing love for Christ and did not lose it in one swell swoop. Again, I doubt they had even realized of its loss until Christ pointed it out.

Where am I heading to? You may be wondering.

Being on fire is no guarantee that I will have it tomorrow, or ten years from today. And there are more than enough examples around us, among them the few that I mentioned at the beginning.

There must be a craving for that fire, an undying passion for all it says. There must be a hunger and thirst for the same to the extent that I can never really have enough however much I take it in.

That is the context of Matthew 5: 6. My spirit is continuously famished until I take in God’s word to the point that I can never have enough of it. There is never a point in my existence that I have the feeling that I have enough of the word, however much I take it in.

This ensures that I am consistently partaking of the word since I have created in my spirit such a hunger and thirst for it that I feel I could die if you denied me the same word.

Psalm 42 is written by such a person.

This person does not read the Bible to be able to make a good sermon or answer a theological question. He does not read the Bible to pass his exams. He does not read the Bible to be up to date with the Christians around him. He does not read the Bible because it is what his peers are doing.

He reads the Bible because it is his existence. It is his essence. It is everything to him. He would die if he doesn’t ingest it at all times.

This is how it is able to shape his worldview just like food shapes the one who ingests it.

He does not read the Bible to change. He changes because he reads the Bible, believes it and walks in its revelation.

And being someone who has been involved in discipleship and Bible dissemination for decades, I have been able to see this firsthand too many times to count. And it of course started with me.

How serious are you with God’s word?

Are you a cup of tea or of porridge?