"Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!"
My breakfast time thought this morning has to do with food. When I think on this verse in Ecclesiastes, I come to the conclusion that Solomon is saying that there are one of two purposes for eating. The first reason is that you can eat for Strength. That is obviously when you eat the food necessary to survive in life and even when you eat the food necessary to maintain a strong physical body. The second reason I see in this verse that you can eat is for Drunkenness. To me, it is saying that you are either eating for strength or you are eating for drunkenness. So, once a person has eaten as much food to give him enough energy to be strong, anything else on top of that is eating for drunkenness. I consider in my life how many of my meals' portions are limited to being enough for strength - not many. Most of my meal-size portions would be sufficient for maybe 3 or 4 people, I would guess. Does that not mean I'm eating "for drunkenness?"
I remember Pastor Curran one time talking about Jonathan Edwards and he very strictly regulated the food that he would eat. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we in America probably eat more than we should be eating. How many times have we heard the analogy about the flesh and the Spirit - whichever dog you feed more will be the stronger dog. I like the analogy. Galatians 5:17 says that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. So, when I eat more food than is necessary for strength, at that point I begin feeding on the flesh... I don't like this post. I think I'll stop now.
The verse in Ecclesiastes speaks of the princes, and how it is better for the people when their princes are temperate (self-controlled/self-disciplined) in regards to their consumption (I could have continued to alliterate these posts by using consumption, but decided against it). The thing is at that time there, and throughout most of the world today, most of the common people would not have an issue to deal with like this. We in America, like the princes in Solomon's day, have the opportunity to pig-out because of our abundance that God has blessed us with.
You say, Hey, I don't get "drunk" when I eat a lot of food. That's a good point to my mind. I agree. I guess you'll just have to ask Solomon how come he was so unwise to write something like that!
So, I hope we all enjoy our Memorial Day... I'm looking forward to that third juicy hamburger for lunch and the potato chips and pop...
