THURSDAY

Colossians 1:17

• What things in your life do you need Christ to hold together?

A few years ago, I made the ultra-righteous decision to go vegan. Not in a devout, militant, send-this-back-to-the-kitchen-and-let-me-talk-to-your-manager kind of way, but more in a soy-milk-in-my-cereal type of way. The goal was just to reduce my strain on the earth’s resources, to eat more whole foods, and honestly? To see if I could do it. It was a personal challenge I was ready to tackle.

I wasn’t sure if this was a forever commitment, a one-month commitment, or a one-meal commitment, but I was eager to experiment with vegan cooking. Grocery shopping that week, I strolled the pretentious vegan aisle with absolute focus, painfully parting with twice the amount of cash I’d normally spend, scanning all the vegan cheeses, ice creams, and sour creams. Years later, I still eat vegan a lot of the time—mostly because my body responds better to it, and because it became pretty easy and somewhat fun.

One of the hardest things to replicate in the vegan world proved to be eggs. Not only was there no real substitute for a nice, fluffy omelet, but baking without eggs evidenced their value in food chemistry: eggs held things together. Without eggs, my banana breads, casseroles, and meatballs crumbled and collapsed with great ceremony, leaving me to get really creative and try what the internet promised to work—something called a “flax egg”?! (Spoiler: it actually works pretty well.)

The Bible says that “[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Without Jesus, the world crumbles and collapses hopelessly. It can feel like a dissolution into a purposeless abyss. And though there are certainly vegan substitutes—flax eggs like relationships, video games, success, and money, nothing holds us together like the real thing: Jesus.