It wasn’t so long ago that food was scarce, and we had to be satisfied with eating what was set in front of us. These days the sheer number of choices available in the local supermarket is mind-boggling. One doesn’t just select peas; there are multiple varieties of peas, each available frozen, canned, or fresh. There is every sort of beverage in several different formats. One can buy beef, pork, chicken, or lamb, not just in every cut but even packaged separately based on how the beast lived: grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free, etc.
Accustomed to this, we are quick to complain if the exact product is not available in precisely the format we want. Our “problem” is clearly a first-world one. Sadly, there are still places in the world where there is not only a limited variety of food but a limited quantity.
Variety is a good thing in itself, displaying the genius of marketing and the efficiency and effectiveness of our economic system. The danger lies in our becoming a little too picky, or even worse, ungrateful. We become like Goldilocks; everything must be “just right.”
Every morsel of food we receive is a precious gift from God. We do well to curb our resentment and annoyance when everything isn’t “just right” and recall how grateful we should be for even the humblest of food.
Enjoy this humorous commercial, which skewers our tendency to be “fussbudgets.”
Father, you may be familiar with the movie “Moscow on the Hudson” starring the late Robin Williams as a Soviet emigre. The scene of him seeing an American supermarket for the first time is touching (Moscow on the Hudson: “Coffee, coffee, coffee: https://youtu.be/VHIcmoY3_lE)