Listen, my son, and be wise, and set your heart on the right path: Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.
- Proverbs 23:21

How much is too much? In the West it’s hard to know because overabundance is the norm. The ancient Christians thought overindulging was a deep vice, a habitual hidden sin in the heart. They called it gluttony and its meaning was “to gulp down.” Part of the problem for us in the West is that we have so many things we can gulp down, and yet we so infrequently recognize our gluttony. For example, one can gulp down media, maybe more easily than food or drink, because it’s hard to discern the feeling of being “full.” How much is enough?

The old spiritual writers saw even worse potential in us: attaching a deep vice like gluttony to spiritual things. For instance, doing many Bible studies without any application or output in service to the body of Christ. What seems outwardly pious is inwardly unsatisfying. 

As you are fasting during Lent, I hope you are able to recognize ways that you might be using news, social media, or entertainment to cover over the endless, deep longing of your heart to belong or be in the inner circle of knowledge. There is only one way for us to grapple with gluttony and that is to embrace an endless, eternally perfect person who promises to be with us always. 

Father, I can feel the pull, the temptation to want to know and to feel like I belong. Yet What I need is not to know but to be known. Not to know more facts but to actually have an eternally perfect Person, your Son. Just for today let your grace invade my empty heart to be satisfied with real personal presence and not chasing after what is not important. For as the Psalmist writes in Psalm 73:28, your nearness is my ultimate good.