Decay is the name of the game. From the moment we are born, we begin to decay or deteriorate. The choices we make in life work either for or against our health and when I say health, I'm referring to our physical, mental and physiological health. All of these together can and do affect our spiritual health.

Right now, I know some folks who are simply "tired." They are a bit older than I am and suffer from numerous ailments. Having gone through CV for the past two years, withlock-downs, mask mandates, vax roll-outs and the rest has not helped their situation. They tend to feel overwhelmed with what they are struggling with in life as they watch their health deteriorate. In effect, death appears to be wrapping it's cold fingers around them now, pulling them into the grave.

However, the way we treat our bodies can make all the difference in the world. Most of us do not treat our bodies as though they are really the temples of the Holy Spirit, do we? We eat and drink what we want, when we want and don't tend to notice the food and drink we ate or drank, while it felt good in our stomachs and was satisfying, the truth may be that it does more harm than good.

The Bible appears to indicate throughout that God wants us to be healthy (Exodus 15:26, Proverbs 3:1-2, 8). Generations ago, more people farmed and because of it, they labored hard in their fields and with their animals in order to bring in a harvest so that they would have food during winter months when growing food was difficult if not impossible, depending upon where they lived. Being fat was not a normal thing for the average person. People walked a lot. They rode horses. They walked behind a plow pulled by horse or oxen in field after field. It was difficult for those folks to become unhealthy, though of course, people did get sick and die. But imagine how bad they would have been if they had not been in the habit of working their bodies?

Today, farming is for a select small percentage of people in the world and even there, modern machinery and equipment has made farming much easier. Driving a tractor over field after field is not the same as walking behind a horse-drawn plow. Yet, today's farming can still offer a certain of amount of labor-intensive work. Farming is not for the lazy person.

But something else changed over the years through modernization that, while creating benefits and ease, also introduced other things into society that works against the health of our bodies. Heavily processed foods and "cheap" (fast) foods that have had all their natural vitamins and minerals removed in the processing and then added "enriched" back into those foods at the end. One can only wonder though if these added vitamins and minerals offer the same benefit as foods that are more natural and organic, never having gone through the high processing that occurs with most of the food being sold today.

I get it, the fact that in order for food to last, preservatives are used to keep the foods from going bad. With preservatives, they will last for weeks or even months on the store shelves or in our pantries. Canning and fermenting foods avoids those preservatives, because they are sealed in airtight containers. They will last for quite a while until opened.

But let's say that everything we eat or drink is great; fully organic and free of preservatives like nitrites, nitrates or many other things that are used to make our foods last, but may or may not be good for us because many people may have a difficult time breaking these things down and because of that, bad side effects can occur, creating numerous negative symptoms that folks may never realize is due to what they eat or drink. I've talked about the problems with high fructose corn syrup for me. I've talked about how gluten negatively impacts me. My sister had Celiac Disease and while I do not, my specialist recommended I avoid all gluten, so I do.