Starting around 7th grade, I started meeting people who didn't eat breakfast. For one reason or another, these people simply skipped out on their morning meal (the “most important meal of the day!”) and instead waited until lunch to eat. As the age of my peers has increased, this has become even more common, with now perhaps 60% of the people I know skipping out on breakfast. There is no lack of reason for this. That extra time is something a lot of people would prefer to utilize by working or (much more commonly) sleeping.
Seemingly unlike these people, I love breakfast. It is frequently my favorite meal of the day. What other meal could legitimately offer sugar-coated bread as an acceptable main course? As such, I've always made time to eat breakfast, and never really understood how people could voluntarily forgo the meal.
I gained some insight on the problem last year during a conversation with a guy who lived on my floor. I saw him eating at a table in the DC during breakfast, and I joined him after getting my customary omelette. As I sat down, I noticed that the only thing on his plate was a piece of toast with some jelly. We talked for a few minutes, and then he got up to leave. I was surprised, since he'd only eaten a piece of toast—hardly an $8.50 value, which is the cost of a swipe to get into the DC. “You're just going to have one piece of toast?” I asked. His response was enlightening to me.
“Yeah, I don't usually eat breakfast, so I'm never really very hungry in the morning.”
Hmm. He wasn't in the habit of eating in the morning, so his body wasn't really prepared to accept food. If you're wondering where this is going, here it is.
I never really had consistent time alone with God until this year. A number of factors—including having my own room and a predictable schedule—finally came together to make it relatively easy to have consistent time alone in the morning. I've never been a big fan of the term commonly used to refer to this practice (“quiet time”), but for the sake of brevity I will put it to use here.
In the past, I honestly found quiet time to be a chore, and I didn't often get a whole lot out of it. This contributed further to the tendency not to do it at all. I would usually go months, or at least weeks at a time without spending any time reading the Bible or in focused prayer. This is descriptive of the experience of many people I've talked to. It just seems like there's not enough time to make it happen, and it turns out to be one of the first things to fall off the bottom of the list of priorities.
My experience this year, however, has been different. In addition to the practical matters, the most important factor that has led to consistency is, interestingly enough, consistency itself. As I kept with it and had quiet time with regularity, my appetite slowly increased. Before, I wasn't really hungry for it because I wasn't really used to doing it. I wasn't prepared to receive the spiritual input, and as a result, I didn't come out of it with much more than a piece of toast. I simply hadn't developed the capacity to take away anything substantial. Yet having now kept it up for a while, my appetite has reached a point where when I wake up in the morning, I'm not only ready to spend some time alone with God, but I'm actually eager to do so, and it brings a peace to the day that I otherwise miss. It's no longer a chore, but rather another breakfast to enjoy, complete with omelette, french toast, and bacon. Something to savor, and a reason to keep coming back.
I wonder what other breakfasts I'm missing out on. What other rich disciplines could be gained by an initial push to acquire an appetite?