Beautiful Consumption

Trading the empty pleasures of this world for the true delight of intimacy with Jesus

Christina Lynn Wallace is a UK-based writer, writing teacher, and the host of the C.S. Lewis podcast, Magic Like This. She is passionate about helping Christians engage their curiosity and creativity by discipling them in their creative writing, allowing art to become an act of worship which flows from a steady prayer life and understanding of the Holy Scriptures. You can find her on her website.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash (edited)

“Out of the depths I have cried to You. O Lord, hear my voice.”
Psalm 130:1-2 NRSV

It was 9 o’clock at night, and my Celtic Daily Prayer Book lay open in my lap, tears streaming down my face. My dog lay on the chair opposite, staring at me.

Only months after bringing him home as a puppy, we realised something wasn’t right: the way he would scarf down his food like he’d been starved; the way he never got over his anxiety of riding in the car; the way he would not only chew but swallow anything in his path; the way he could go from calm to lunging and snarling within seconds.

For months, we had no idea that he had caught severe parasites, which resisted normal de-worming medication. By the time we found and treated the parasites, the damage had already been done, altering his microbiome, brain chemistry, and our lifestyle in ways I never thought possible. It had been a year of medical and behavioural intervention, and things seemed to be improving—until he “lost it” and had another episode (out of nowhere) last Saturday morning.

Every time this happens, my mind immediately goes to the worst case scenario: What if this had happened with someone else? What if he never gets better? What if he ends up having to be put to sleep?

I pictured his young, lifeless body in my arms, and I lost it.

So I spent all of Saturday afternoon developing new care plans, “bartering” with God for our future, and distracting myself by walking around town. I kept looking at my phone, scrolling through Instagram for anything to numb my fear—and was surprised to find that my old “hunger” for mindless distractions wasn’t there. It had been replaced by a different hunger altogether.

I had spent the last 6 months berating myself for the hours I lost to mindless scrolling. I had written essays and recorded podcast episodes where I confessed that my phone was basically like my own parasite. It had siphoned away my prayer and Bible time over the years, and I had constantly felt guilty for it.

But berating myself hadn’t exactly proven an effective strategy for healing; and in my knowledge of God’s character as the Author of abundance, I don’t believe that we are invited into a holy consumption through the back door of shame. God invites us to renew our minds, not by getting us to focus on all of the things we shouldn’t consume but by beckoning us “further up and further in” (in the words of my favourite author) to what we should consume. And consuming what we “should” isn’t meant to be a burden either. (I don’t know about you, but imposing guilt on myself for skipping morning quiet time has never ignited more hunger for the Word.)

What we consume affects our souls. I can’t speak to the unique areas in your own life where your consumption might be a metaphorical parasite, eating away at you while you refuse the antidote. But I can speak to this: in all things, God invites us down a path to freedom, and when we try to punish ourselves into giving up the bad consumption (be it phone time or sugar or something too dark to name) by simultaneously guilting ourselves into picking up the good consumption (like reading the Scriptures or spending time in prayer), it’s like we’re looking back at the thing which put us in bondage in the first place, asking it to teach us how to be free.

What if altering our consumption habits didn’t need to be so heavy? What if beautiful, holy consumption looked like embracing the way God wired us and allowing ourselves to enjoy not only what but how we consume? What if we altered our perspective on consumption and it became – dare I say it – fun?

For me, something shifted two years ago when I realised that I could engage both my creative and analytical brain at the same time while reading my Bible. I gave myself permission (which I hadn’t realised I’d needed) to make messy notes and use fancy pens, not because I had to but because I was excited to fill my pages with both questions and colour.

I’m a painter and an academic. I’ve always loved curiosity and creativity. And I realised that I could use colour and scribbles to make my reading time simple, joyful, and fun. My Bible reading, for the first time in my life, turned into something I got to do – not something I had to do.

Photo credit: Christina Lynn Wallace

I’ve unlocked similar “aha” moments more recently in my prayer life. As a writer, I constantly feel under pressure to come up with beautiful sentences. By the time I reach the end of a long day, the last thing I want to do is find the words to pray. But I was raised in an evangelical tradition that only ever taught me to pray “freestyle.”

So when I gave myself permission to stop putting so much pressure on “finding the words,” instead praying the liturgies of the Celtic Saints, my prayer life came alive in a way I’d never experienced. I lost myself in the sacredness of words that have been uttered by the Church for centuries. Far from feeling like I’d “switched off,” my spirit woke up.

This isn’t a formula, of course, for developing your own habits for consumption. What works for me might not work for you. Consider this friendly permission (in case you need it) to embrace the way God designed you so that you can enjoy a holy consumption which is easy, light, beautiful, and free.

I am certainly still addicted to my phone, but the scales seem to be tipping, for the first time, not because I’m avoiding my phone but because I’m delighting in God. And the more we consume something, the more we want to consume it.

The weight of Humphrey’s precious little life cast such a shadow of grief over me last Saturday, and it isn’t just the grief of potentially losing him—it’s the way that his illness calls out every other grief within me: my fears for the future, the heaviness of my own health conditions, the struggles in my marriage, the uncertainty surrounding whether I’ll ever become a mother, the anxious dread of a future in which we might have to invite total heartbreak into our lives by giving up the first beloved little creature that God has ever entrusted to us as a couple. The darkness of sorrow beckoned, but my old cravings—my old parasites of consumption—had lost their power.

Instead, much to my surprise, I had an insatiable longing to pray. I craved the antidote. I was hungry for the liturgies and the Scriptures in a way I’m usually only hungry to check my notifications.

So, I found myself on the couch at 9 o’clock that night, Celtic Prayer Book in hand, sobbing:

“Out of the depths I have cried to You. O Lord, hear my voice.”

And I realised that my slow, gentle habit of making God the object of my consumption was just the beginning: in His love, His presence consumed me. Discipling our own consumption is an act of beautiful worship, because through it, we fix our eyes on Him, offering up ourselves to be consumed by the Holy One who sees every fear and grief within us.