Psalm 34 and the Gift of Taste

[00:00:00]Taste and see, the Lord is good.

[00:00:03]We're learning how to pour out our hearts before God. And today, I want to return to Psalm 34. We looked at that once and sit on this one thought today.

[00:00:13]Don't miss it.

[00:00:14]This is the only chance you ever have it today. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And I want to think about a gift that we have to give [music] to other people relative to this verse I had not thought about before. One of the major gifts that we will ever give in life.

[00:00:37]I have to start here. There actually is a syndrome, ageusia, I think it's pronounced, and it involves the loss of the sense of taste often combined with the loss of sense of smell. And that might seem like a minor thing, but I have a friend who suffered a head injury and that's the one remaining symptom that's still going on. It actually turns out to be something that can be quite serious.

[00:01:00]Can lead to malnutrition, loss of appetite, health problems, inability to detect spoiled food, and even mood disorders, uh a loss of joy, a deep sense of frustration cuz we forget how much joy and pleasure we simply get out of the act of eating.

[00:01:16]And now, taste and see that the Lord is good. There didn't have to be that joy built into life. God thought that up and not just that, every single joy on Earth did not have to exist.

[00:01:29]It does because God has placed it there.

[00:01:30]The reason that death is so painful to us is because life is so good. Now, I know it's fallen, broken, can be brutal, but underneath it, transcending it, there is such an amazing level of gift. Taste and see the Lord is good. And we just walk through the day like zombies.

[00:01:48]Um speaking of that, I just found out a couple days ago a wonderful joke somebody in my family told. A group of people were watching a zombie movie.

[00:01:56]Zombies are Walking Dead together, and um one of the zombies uh performed an act of gallantry towards a living woman in the movie. And this member of my family said, "I guess chivalry is dead."

[00:02:12]Which is a very funny joke, trust me.

[00:02:15]Taste and see the Lord is good. Every time somebody laughs, billions of laughs every day going for thousands and thousands of years, the capacity to experience joy. Taste and see the Lord is good.

[00:02:28]So, my friend Kevin sent me this. It's uh written by folks at a ministry called Axis that looks at parents and children.

[00:02:35]It's going to move to what's the gift that we're able to give. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

[00:02:43]Starts like this. Famous chef, cultural commentator, travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain was 9 years old on a fishing boat off the coast of France with his family when a local fisherman named Monsieur Saint-Jour, I'll be pronouncing it, pulled a raw oyster from the water, offered it to his American passengers.

[00:03:01]Young Anthony, a self-professed picky eater who had spent most of his young life pushing food around his plate.

[00:03:09]Now, there's a little picture.

[00:03:11]I'm a picky eater who spends most of my life pushing food around my plate rather than in this moment and in this moment and in this moment with this person, with this opportunity, with what I get to you do with you right now. Taste and see the Lord is good. Young Anthony stood up and with all the joie de vivre he could muster, grinned and said, "I'll try it."

[00:03:32]He tilted the shell back and swallowed the whole thing.

[00:03:36]Later in life, Bourdain would write that the oyster tasted of seawater and brine and flesh and somehow of the future.

[00:03:43]Everything was different now.

[00:03:45]Everything.

[00:03:48]The revelation had nothing to do with the oyster, but with what happens when something real rips through and cracks our world wide open, allowing us to realize that the world is bigger and more alive and more vibrant and more of a miracle and more of a gift every moment of it than we ever knew taste and see.

[00:04:12]C.S. Lewis would have understand Bourdain's experience immediately.

[00:04:15]In his essay The Weight of Glory, Lewis said, "We don't want just to see beauty, though God knows even that is bounty enough. We want something else that can hardly be put into words, to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to somehow become a part of it."

[00:04:36]We were not just made to observe goodness from a distance or to reflect on it.

[00:04:42]It was made to be tasted. And this is what the psalmist says, "Taste and see."

[00:04:47]One of my favorite uh Christian writers and thinkers is G.K.

[00:04:51]Chesterton.

[00:04:53]And he had a tremendous appetite for life. He was tremendously huge guy, just larger than life in every respect. And part of what he writes about so wonderfully is uh how we have forgotten the wonder that anything exists at all. He says, "In fairy tales, there'll be stories of apples of gold and that evokes wonder in us cuz we forget the wonder we felt when we were tiny and we discovered that apples were red or apples were green.

[00:05:18]Why should there be apples? Why should anything exist at all?"

[00:05:22]We just take it for granted because it is when it is as magic as any fairy tale we could read. It's just that this is the one that we happen to live in. But we don't know why.

[00:05:32]Here he says, "I am trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described.

[00:05:38]The strongest emotion is that life is as precious as it is puzzling. It is an ecstasy because it is an adventure. It is an adventure because it is an opportunity.

[00:05:51]The test of all happiness is gratitude, and I felt grateful although I hardly knew to whom.

[00:05:59]Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?

[00:06:12]We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

[00:06:21]So, uh this piece from the folks at Axis goes on to say, "Somewhere along the line people in your life, now if you're a parent, particularly they're writing about this will be true for your children or maybe a niece or a nephew or a student or grandchild or just some other friend, uh they will uh form their opinion of what is good.

[00:06:39]Their taste.

[00:06:41]Might start with their taste in music or fashion or food.

[00:06:45]But eventually it will give way to that which happens below the surface, a sense of what is worth caring about, what is beautiful, what is true, the character worth becoming, the life worth building, wisdom worth chasing.

[00:06:59]Taste is caught.

[00:07:01]Uh taste is such an extraordinary and important thing, a sense of what's beautiful, what has value, what is worth giving myself to. What do I want to fill my mind with?

[00:07:12]Taste is caught.

[00:07:14]Absorbed.

[00:07:15]It accumulates slowly through exposure and experience.

[00:07:20]When we're paying attention, sometimes when we're not.

[00:07:25]Think for a moment now about your own sense of what is good, what you love, what brings you joy, what moves you, what you find beautiful or true or worth returning to. Take a moment right now, taste and see.

[00:07:39]And thank God.

[00:07:42]But then ask this question, where did that come from? Chances are it came from someone.

[00:07:48]A parent introduced you to their catalog of music. A teacher handed you a book and said, "You got to read this."

[00:07:54]A dinner table full of uh that people that you care about. An uncle who loved God in a way that made you want what that person had. Someone shaped your taste. Most of the time they weren't even trying. They were just present.

[00:08:05]They just loved what they loved out loud in front of you. C.S. Lewis uh writes someplace, that's part of why there are so many people each one of us sees a different facet of the goodness and greatness and glory and beauty of God. And we all praise it and in doing that we enrich the experience of everybody else around it. And every bit of taste that you have for that bit of beauty, for uh birds if you're a birder, or for a garden, or for the harp, or uh cricket, or whatever it is.

[00:08:36]Someone shaped your taste. They weren't even trying.

[00:08:39]A taste for what is good is cultivated.

[00:08:42]It requires somebody willing to introduce the good, sit with the hard, and remain present while something real takes root.

[00:08:53]As a tastemaker, see now this is part of our role in life.

[00:08:57]Uh this is particularly true if you are a parent. You're a tastemaker for that little child, or for your friend, or for relatives, or for students, or for people at work.

[00:09:08]You help shape somebody else's discernment, their ability to look at the world, culture, friendship, ideas, opportunities, and know the difference between what's good and what just looks good, what lasts and what fades, what's true and what's just loud, what is of God and what is counterfeit.

[00:09:26]So today, take a few moments to reflect on your role as tastemaker in somebody else's life.

[00:09:35]Ask yourself what people or places or experience helped shape my understanding of what is good and what is beautiful and what is true. Part of what I love in my office is it's filled with pictures and books, objects uh that remind me of the people who helped point me in the direction where I could taste and see taste and see taste and see chivalry is dead.

[00:10:03]Where might my own tastes or preferences be limiting my child's growth or somebody else's? Am I open today to what God might teach me? Do their interests You know, sometimes somebody else uh has found beauty or goodness in a kind of music or a kind of book or a kind of experience or a place to travel that I'd kind of shut myself off to and I become one of those zombies.

[00:10:27]What voices have the most influence in my child's life right now and the people that I care about right now?

[00:10:33]What kind of discernment or tasteful wisdom do I want my child, my friend, my relatives to have by the time that they're grown up? How am I helping them to cultivate that? How can I walk through this day and not be dead, not have my eyes closed, not lose that sense of taste, not be a walking zombie, but today be alive and taste and see cuz I'm still here. The Lord is good. [music] The Lord is good. Taste taste.

[00:11:01]My middle school youth pastor used to take me out to [music] Rusty's Cheeseburgers almost every Sunday after church and still to this day Rusty's Cheeseburgers are my absolute favorite burger on the planet. Cashmere, Washington, if you're ever driving through Cashmere, stop by Rusty's.

[00:11:22]But I was thinking about Joe and Rusty's burgers during this episode because Joe was a taste and see that the Lord is good maker in my life. [music] And I thought about him a a lot in my life because I want to do that for others. So, here's a couple questions for you in the comments or if you want to text or email us your answer, do you have a favorite meal? It's kind of a light-hearted question. What's your favorite meal? All right, like John said that rips through your reality and just reminds you that you're alive. Food can do that.

[00:11:54]And then, has there been a tastemaker in your life? Someone that's [music] taught you about the goodness of God. More than just a video, Become New is a global community of people who are putting Jesus in charge of their spiritual formation. So, be a part of that community by chiming in in the comments.

[00:12:10]We read your comments or emails, your texts every day and we're so grateful for you and for you being on this journey with us. To find out more about become new, head over to becomenew.com.

[00:12:21]Otherwise, we're glad you're here and we'll see you next time.