Feeding the Fish

Have you had fish before? If you have, and perhaps even if you haven't you know about feeding fish. Fish food comes in a little round container with a screw on lid. Every few days, or so you remember that you should throw a pinch of fish food in them to keep them swimming. I always thought that this proceedure was the only way to feed fish. I haven't had fish in years but last summer when I set up the fish tank for my darling child, I really wanted to do it right. I checked every kind of chemical level possible to get the water just right, and I even read the label on the fish food. Feed the fish 3 times a day! No wonder I never had amazing luck with fish. You will be glad to know that we have only lost a small percentage of our fish.

This spring we were gifted with a pair of newts. The newts came with food, but the previous owners admitted that it wasn't the right variety. We needed to do some research to find out what they would eat. I learned a lot about newts and incidentally a little about fish too. I hope you aren't eating your breakfast. I found a chart that details the best possible food and the worst possible food for newts. The worst possible food is what came with the newts, which explains why they wouldn't eat it. And fish flakes were also on the chart with a comment about fish not eating them either!? My fish seemed to eat them, right. So they had several things that were better for newts that we could probably find at the store, and the suggestion that the best thing would be to dig for worms in the backyard. Not that I'm against this. But I'd prefer to buy something that would entail less work. So we go and make a couple purchases trying to find what the newts like the best. One bottle of freeze dried compressed worm cubes, and a package of larva preserved in gel. I won't drag this out for ever. But the newts prefer the larva, in fact that is the only thing they will eat. As for the worm cubes, the label also indicated that fish would eat them. So we gave that a try. Sure enough those fish got pretty excited!

Tonight as I was watching the fish enjoy their treat - have they grown since being introduced to it! As Christians do we put ourselves on fish flake diets? Occassionally, giving ourselves a few well mulled over, preprocessed flakes of scripture? Allowing others to direct how we think. Do we go so far as to go about this excersize often? There is a whole Christian merchandise market. If you have a catchy take on scripture you can make a mint off of Christians. 40 days of fish food, anybody? (These things have their place, but when they are as "phenomenal" within the church as they are, is something wrong?)

As I was watching the pretty orange fish gathering around greedly picking out from the cube the choice morsels, I thought of our bible study. Selah ladies are greedy for the choice morsels of scripture. I have learned to really dig and seek Him out in the word. I'm so glad I can be in a gathering of friends and seek the Lord through the scriptures. When I haven't been feed I find that I get hungry.

Ooops, there I go talking about food again :)