Pastor Mike Nodland of the Christian Fellowship Church in Vining, IA.

Growing up on a farm, free-range chickens meant that you’d have to catch ’em, to eat ’em. Today, they gotta print that fact on the packaging. “Wild caught” meant that either you shot them out of the sky, hooked them in the crick, or ran over them with the pickup. Everything that crawled was pasture-fed except the dog. And the FDA was more like FWA: Food Without Additives. The only thing that became highly processed was my bottom end for squirming in church during the sermon on Sundays.

My mom loved her fake flowers and bowl of fake fruit on the dining room table. You didn’t need fact-checkers to determine if you should eat more than one of her plastic grapes. But everything’s getting bio-engineered, artificially intelligent…fake!

Pepperoni pizza has fake pepperoni. There’re fake pretzels and crackers, and you can buy a fake stick of butter sale-priced at $16.95! For the penny-pincher, there’s the fake vanilla-crunch-dipped strawberry treat for three George Washingtons bills. For those trying to go cold turkey from smoking, there’s the fake cigarette and ashtray.

I like the real deal, not a free meal while listening to a hearing aid spiel. What’s real? Jesus! His gift is free, organic (down to earth), preapproved, and fully certified as the real deal by the Heavenly Father.