One morning you open your front door to get the newspaper and stumble over a beautifully wrapped package. In amazement you open this gift and find nestled inside a pure, white bunny. Around its neck is a little note that reads… “This is a special gift from heaven for you. I want you to take care of it for me. I trust you to make sure it grows big and strong. From your heavenly Father.” Wow! After receiving this gift, I’m sure you’d be off to the library to research the best food to feed your bunny.

Let’s bring this imaginary world back to reality. If you are a mother, God has visited you, and blessed you with a beautiful gift (or gifts) from His creative hands. Each miracle of life was carefully chosen for you to help nourish and nurture them to healthy maturity. This is a heavy responsibility, not something to take lightly or do nonchalantly. It should not be a burden, but an exciting challenge that God, the Creator of life, has entrusted to us. We are to nurture this seed of life from conception onwards. 

We are talking about human life, not bunnies, so why don’t we raise them healthily? Is it because it’s so easy, in our busy lives, to drive through McDonalds, or buy pre-packaged, devitalized junk? Is it because everyone else does it, so it must be okay? 

Would we give fruit loops (full of dye and over 50% sugar), or some white processed bread (basically no more nutrients than cardboard, no matter how much it is chemically enriched), and some pop, to our little bunny and hope for the best? Of course we wouldn’t. We would feed it the healthiest bunny food possible, and not take any chances.  So why do we feed our precious children whatever rubbish is convenient, and maybe appease our conscience with a smattering of fruit, and a daily bright orange vitamin in the shape of a cartoon character? One day it dawned on me that I cannot gamble with my children’s health. God assigned me this very job.  

Who’s the Best Fed?

The sad realization is that most pets are fed nutritionally better than a lot of children. There are many advertisements for special vet recommended dog food, filled with a myriad of vitamins and minerals. Food advertisements for children are almost always for a new brand of sugar-frosted cereal or a processed, packaged meal like macaroni and cheese. Who would dream of filling their dog’s drinking dish with coke? Yet it is not a shocking thing to see a glass of pop poured out for a child! What a sad mix up.

In most restaurants the children’s menu has nothing that you could call nourishing. Cheeseburgers, fries, chicken nuggets dunked in greasy batter, and pizza are the usual fair. Young children are being filled with garbage, not fit for an animal, and suffer discomforts like obesity, allergies, skin disorders, headaches, tummy aches, earaches, anemia, fatigue, moodiness (which is frequently diet related) and even hyperactivity. This last complaint is sometimes sadly mistaken for A.D.D. and then the children have to live on drug medication which destroys living cells - all because of the dead junk food we put in their bodies to begin with! 

As mothers, we need to ask ourselves; are we poisoning our children through today’s accepted diet? We do live in an imperfect world and there are things beyond our control. God is our ultimate trust, not our diet. I believe however, that what we “can do” we “should do”. 

I love the Scripture in Psalm 144:12 TLB that describes the children in a nation that God blesses, “Sons vigorous and tall as growing plants. Daughters of graceful beauty like the pillars of a palace wall.” To have our children be described this way, our sons would need to be fit and vigorous, and our daughters would have to be in shape, elegant and strong. We can only fulfill this verse by feeding our children in the right way.