taste.

Nothing in creation is like him. Everything around us is flawed in some way. Even before the Fall, no glory in creation compared to the glory of the Creator. But…sin has the power to make blind us to the glory of God. Sadly, awe of God is quickly replaced by awe of you.

-Paul Tripp-

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

-C.S. Lewis-

He wants so much more for us.  I have a hard time understanding it.  That in the midst of my adoration of myself, I have missed something truly grand.  Something truly beautiful. Something true.

My boys have no idea what is out there.  They climb the trees in our yard to get a better look of our street.  They have no idea what it feels like to stand 14,000 feet in the air on a mountain in Colorado in July, with snow around your ankles and blue sky and white peaks that seem to go on forever.  They eat burgers and green beans and chew gum.  But they’ve never tasted food made by John Fleer that comes in courses and is full of laughter as each taste seems to dance on your tongue.  My boys love me and they love their dad and they follow Chloe all over the playground.  But they have no idea what it feels like to kiss in the rain, to dance in the dark, to have a stomach full of butterflies and a heart that could bust at any moment because one person walked into a room. 

My boys only have a taste of what is to come in their lives.

And it is the same for us.  We have only a taste.  Wine and laughter and sex and hope and mountains and sunsets and oceans and holding hands while you fall asleep and dancing and music and friendship and peace…we have barely scratched the surface of what is.  He wants so much more for us.  He has made things that are good in order for us to see him.  For, all good things point to him.  All good things are the evidence that he is living and moving among us.  All good things are the invitation to a collision of the Holy in our lives and our hearts.  All good things are a taste of Him.

But we get in the way.  We taste, we experience and as soon as it is on our tongue, we turn.  And we see our own pleasure, our own satisfaction, our own contributions, our own desires.  We pat ourselves on the back or we push ourselves farther or we walk past the lines that keep us safe in order to feel that deeper sense of self-worship that we pretend not to have. 

And our taste begins to fade.  It becomes dull.  And suddenly, it is not quite what it used to be. And we are hungry again.

He wants so much more for us.

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!
The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

-Psalm 34:8-10-