I was flipping through an old cookbook of my Mom's, looking for a tasty new way to eat an eggplant I bought, when I came across a short history on the onion given inside a chapter devoted to casseroles.

"Of all the races that have peopled the earth in recorded time, the Egyptians were the most impressed with the onion, regarding it as sacred," writes Myra Waldo in her 1962 paperback, "The Complete Book of Vegetable Cookery." "It was believed to be a divine food, giving unbounded strength to the eater; Herodotus, an expert beyond reproach, states that the standard food for those who built the great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt was onions; and further, that the cost of onions for the workmen was the equivalent of two million dollars."

Reading this, I immediately thought of the Bible passage in Numbers 11 that reveals how, during the time the children of Israel lived in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt, some of the people angered God by complaining to Moses they were tired of only having manna to eat each day.

"Who shall give us flesh to eat?" they are said to have whined to Moses, weeping. "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:
"But our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes."

Since I developed a bit of a gastro-intestinal condition last fall—which, thankfully, I'm now almost fully recovered from—I've shied away from using onions and garlic in my cooking, and dearly miss both of these cousin bulbs, especially when making my spaghetti, or my stir-fry, or my jambalaya, or my enchilada casserole, or my ham and cheese omelet, or my pita bread pizza, or my tuna salad, or my five-bean soup, on and on.

Manna, as we're told in the Numbers passage, looked like coriander seed, had the color of

bdellium and was baked in pans to make cakes that had the taste of fresh oil.

Sounds to me like endless hush puppies—breakfast, lunch, dinner. Or maybe a healthy, non-fried alternative to the fried dough you get at Little Italy's Feast of San Gennaro festival.

The reason God was displeased with these whiners, as my pastor explains in it in an old study I have on tape, had to do with their sinful thinking process that showed a lack of maturity, gratitude or appreciation for the Bigger Picture and their place in it as God's chosen people.

"God brings Israel out of Egypt but there's a bunch of folks whose heart isn't really with the Lord—they're not really the Israel of God," explains my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill). "The verse says, 'The mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting.' They're drawn away and enticed through their own lust. And that's where sin's going to be conceived.

"Notice how they cry, 'But now there's nothing but manna in our eyes.' Imagine that—all they had to eat was angel's food. God says manna was the food He fed angels. These folks had never been into Canaan. They go into Canaan in the Book of Joshua and eat the new corn in the land. They never had that before.

"They never had any of those (good) experiences yet, but what caused them to start longing for the old life was their imaginations. They were enslaved to memories of what they had been redeemed from, and their whole thought life was dominated by the defeated enemy back over on the other side of the Red Sea.

"That’s the way sin works. Sin is conceived in your thought life; in your imagination. You have the thought; you have the idea. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. 'I want it, I need it, I deserve it.' 'I long for it, I can't do without it.' You get those thoughts going—the desire, the interest—then you make the choice, and then you take the action.

"But, you know, after you take the action, you've got something besides the consequences; you've got a memory. And you take that memory and you hang it up on the picture gallery of your mind.

"You hang it up on the wall of your imagination and every now and then you take a stroll back down imagination's picture gallery, and that memory becomes a suggestion. The suggestion becomes a desire and the desire becomes an interest, an enticement, and then it's conceived, and the sinful action comes, and now you've got another memory to put up there.

"And have you ever noticed how the remorse and the bitterness and the consequences kind of go away, but the picture—even though it might fade just a little bit—stays there? And a little while later you find yourself strolling back down imagination's lane and, lo and behold, now there are two pictures there. And the memory becomes an even stronger suggestion and the suggestion becomes a desire, and then with the desire you're drawn away. . . Pretty soon you don't even need to walk down Memory Lane—your mind is so cluttered with these pictures—everywhere you look there's one."

In II Peter 2:14, Peter talks about some people "having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls." Everywhere they looked, they found a picture to remind them.

Peter continues in verses 20-22, "For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
"For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
"But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire."

As Jordan reasons, "That's how sin binds you. And that's how even when you begin to clean up the memory gallery of your mind, one fall and sin jumps out with more power than it had before. The battle's going to be in your mind and you have to 'cast down the imaginations,' the memories, and 'all that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God'—the human viewpoint that says, 'I'll do it my way, my way's better, I don't need God, I don't need God's Word, I don't need God's way. That's all just weak crutches for people who don't really know how to live life.' "

The Apostle Paul tells us to bring "into captivity very thought to the obedience of Christ." He says for us to "seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Col. 3:1-3)

Jordan explains, "When Paul says 'set your affections,' he's not just saying to 'cast a wishful eye,' he's saying it like when you set the radio dial to the right number, exactly on the right frequency. He's saying, 'Take a little time, put a little energy into your thinking process and set your thoughts right to the dial. Fixate your mind on things above where Christ sits at the right hand of God.' That's what brings every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

"If you want to stop sin, you don't stop it by handcuffing the outward action. You have to go internally and work on the inner thinking process, because that's where sin starts. The idea is to bring your thinking pattern into captivity to what Christ teaches."