The remote in my hand seemed frozen on the channel as morbid curiosity drew me into yet another reality show. A depiction of love gone awry invaded my space.

The story of a mother who “loved” her son to the brink of death by enabling him to eat without restraint beckoned me to keep watching. Evidently she cooked her son into a recliner and he couldn’t get up. Rescue workers needed a contraption like the Jaws of Life to get him out of his home and into the hospital. Outside the room where doctors scrambled to save her son, Billy’s tearful mother talked about her baby boy as if her were an infant. Billy was 19 years old, and weighed 800 lbs.

Billy’s mom equated food with love. I’m sure she never set out to kill her son. But her own agenda maligned his well-being. This dysfunctional relationship between a mother who incapacitated her son, and his inability to say no, drove me to ponder the true meaning of love.

When I consider the imperfections, foibles, faux pas and basic bad habits of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of our faith, I realize God does not expect perfection. We usually read the last part of the story, where we learn of their amazing accomplishments, but fail to consider the long process these heroes of the faith endured before arriving. They had a big learning curve, sometimes wandering through decades of hit and miss before they got it. Typically, it was an act of God that enabled the necessary change, rather than joining the local fitness club.

Take Rahab for instance. She may have had dreams of becoming a wife and mother like the other little girls in her culture, but wound up a prostitute hopelessly stuck in a demoralizing lifestyle with no apparent way out.

Yet in spite of her career path, God chose Rahab to be part of His plan. The moment she decided to believe in the true God of Israel, her life became a do-over.

After risking her life to help Joshua and his men, she eventually married a Jewish man and became the mother of Boaz, who is in the lineage of Jesus Christ. God restored Rahab’s dignity, and fulfilled her destiny, and it happened without going on the grapefruit diet. She is even listed with other great heroes of the faith like Abraham and Moses in Hebrews 11.

Romans 4 says that God’s righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from self effort. God makes no distinction in regard to our status, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We can only plead Christ’s finished work on the cross as our justification.

That's better than any New Year's Resolution I can think of.

Expecting an overdue reply about an important project, I opened my Inbox yesterday with anticipation. 16 emails awaited me. My hopes sunk as I Scanned the subjects and realized 15 of them were Spam, leaving one little Christian chain-mail, forwarded by someone I think I met at a conference once. This left a window of time for me to ponder the true definition of “Spam.”

The ingredients list on the original Spam can (which is an actual food product) is indeed a lengthy paragraph, including compound and hyphenated words that are not in the dictionary. My conclusion is that spam is made of a bunch of cow, pig, and maybe chicken parts that are not the first choice of American grocery shoppers. These parts are mixed with preservatives and flavor enhancers that make it palatable. In other words, the left-overs are consolidated and packaged in a way that might taste good to some unsuspecting soul.

Growing up in the 60’s, healthy food consisted of Potato Chip crusted Tuna Casserole, Pigs in a Blanket, and Kool-Aid. Even so, as a child I still suspected that when Mom fixed Spam for dinner, we were scraping the bottom of the food barrel. Though it tasted good fried with a little mustard, I nevertheless sensed that I was eating something that may not, in fact, be real food.

Now Spam has become a family joke. My adult nephews give a can of it to each other every year for Christmas. We laugh over the fact that Spam can withstand nuclear attack, realistically has a shelf life of about 50 years, and is probably still being digested by our stomachs since childhood. After eaten, Spam leaves one feeling full for awhile. But regret eventually follows due to the aftermath of Spam on one’s gastrointestinal tract.