Fasting & Feasting: Taste and See

Excerpt taken from Fasting & Feasting: 40 Devotions to Satisfy the Hungry Heart by Erin Davis

 

Day 2
Feasting
Taste and See

 

Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him! You who are his holy ones, fear the Lord, for those who fear him lack nothing. Young lions lack food and go hungry, but those who seek the Lord will not lack any good thing.
—Psalm 34:8-10

Imagine a world where Christmas comes three times a day—a steady stream of gifts all day, every day. Exciting, right? Now take the mental leap with me from that scenario to your kitchen table. Picture the pile of presents God has delivered to that well-worn spot.

Recall Thanksgiving dinners loaded with juicy turkeys and steaming sides. Remember special birthday dinners where your family has blown out the candles atop so many cakes. Think of Sunday suppers and pizza nights, spilled milk, and sticky oatmeal gloop.

In hindsight those meals come to mind with a warm glow around them, don’t they? Have you ever wondered why food is involved in so many of our best memories and most cherished relationships? Have you ever considered if that’s by design instead of by default?

God never just fills our bellies. He fills our homes. He fills our hearts.

READ PSALM 34.

My own dining room table is a hand-me-down from my granny. She bought it in the sixties at a yard sale and stripped it and refinished it herself. It needs to be sanded and finished once again, but I can’t bear to erase the spot where the stain from her coffee cup remains. It’s a reminder of the blessings God gave me through her.

Many childhood memories involve the table. Some are fancy—candlelit meals eaten on fine china on Christmas Eve. Others are more pedestrian—piles of spaghetti on paper plates, ham sammies with the crust cut off. All of them are gifts, given to me by a God who loves me.

When David wanted to express his gratitude for God’s blessings, he used food as a frame of reference. He could have said, “Look and see that the Lord is good.” We can surely see God’s gifts all around us. He could have said, “Listen and see that the Lord is good.” We hear His goodness in a child’s laughter, in a nightingale’s song, in the roar of a waterfall or the dribble of a mountain stream. But David chose an alternate sense to call us to worship. He chose our sense of taste.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. (v. 8)

A few chapters later in Psalm 103, David uses eating imagery again to remind us of God’s blessings.

He satisfies you with good things;
your youth is renewed like the eagle. (v. 5)

Satisfaction. Renewed energy. These are the benefits of food. What if each bite is a missionary, sent to remind us who He is and what He has done?

Here’s a truth so simple we miss it daily—food is a blessing from God. Let me say it louder for the people in the back—food is a blessing from God!

We live in a culture with a volatile relationship with food. Either food is everything, the key that unlocks a happy, fulfilling life or food is the enemy, a monster we must tame at any cost. Perhaps it’s because our bellies experience true hunger so rarely (if ever) that we forget that fundamentally food is a gift, graciously provided by a generous God so that we might taste and see that He is good.

Your morning cup of coffee? That’s a gift.

Your breakfast? Yep, that’s a gift, too.

Did you have a yummy salad for lunch or a sandwich with a bag of chips? Did you bless the Lord for giving you the gift of food once again?

As you make dinner plans, are you fixated on the ingredients you don’t have or the fact that you have hungry mouths to feed again? Or are you reminded that God is good? That He still has good things in store for you today?

Don’t veer into guilt. That’s not the action step the psalmist calls us to. Instead, ask the Lord to help you see food as a gift from Him, to use what you taste to help you see—He really is good. “He satisfies you with good things.”

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Order your copy of Fasting & Feasting: 40 Devotions to Satisfy the Hungry Heart by Erin Davis