Habits

 

As I write these words, I have a pot of pinto beans cooking on the stove. I love pinto beans, and they are especially good with onions and mustard accompanied by a wedge of crunchy cornbread—not soft, sweet, pseudo-cornbread but firm, crunchy bread, baked in an iron skillet. This is how my mother made cornbread, so it seems right to me. And I’m not the only one.

When I was a student at Concord College (now Concord University) in Athens, West Virginia, many of my dorm mates went home every weekend, returning to campus in waves all Sunday afternoon. One such day as I left my room to head over to the cafeteria, I passed an open door where two or three girls from my home county were gathered around plates of cornbread and beans fixed the right way—crumbled bread topped by beans and bean juice. One of the girls had been home and had returned with this treasure. They offered me a bite, and I was tempted but decided not to interfere.

The things we grow up loving seem good to us, don’t they? Often those things—like the beans and bread—are products of necessity, but that doesn’t change the fact that this love can carry over into decades of adult preferences. (I want to acknowledge that childhood hurts can also have lasting effects, but that’s a topic for another time.)

I’ve been reading a book recommended by missionary Melissa Baccarella. It’s called You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith. The subtitle is The Spiritual Power of Habit and I’m finding it to be very thought-provoking. This book is the kind that makes me wish I could start over with some things, but one thing it makes me grateful for is the habit of church-going that was developed in me as a child. My habit of being in church on Sunday morning put me in the right place to hear God’s word week after week; it filled my mind with beautiful music and wholesome words; it gave me friends who might notice if I weren’t there. And one day, when I was far from God in my daily practices, it drew me into the vestibule of a church to listen for a few minutes to the service. Probably no one present that day knew I was there, but God was speaking to me and making my heart tender to his leading.

Like beans and cornbread, a habit of going to church is simple but nourishing. Other habits over the years—praying before eating, reciting scripture on the drive to school, collecting missionary cards—have also fed my soul and helped shape my thinking. In his book, Smith covers several areas of life in which habits help shape our loves and our attitudes. Thumbing back through the book recently, I saw that on two separate pages, I had penciled in a statement from Anne Lamott: “We crave what we eat.” I have found this principle to be so true in recent years, applicable to many areas of life.

My encouragement to you today is this: If there is something you know you should do, but you find you don’t love it, just keep doing it. Make it a habit, and one day, you may find yourself craving that very thing.

Proverbs 16:3 says, “Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established.” Eat the beans, take the walk, kneel in prayer. Then do it again tomorrow.