Taste and See
Re-reading Psalm 34 this morning, and remembering afresh how it’s one of my favorites ever. Each line, a testimony to both God’s ruling authority and His soft, gentle heart. One of my favorite verses—though it’s hard to choose!—has to be verse 8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good!”
I went to a John Mark Pantana concert last year, and he was talking about this scripture. He recounted that for most of his life, he knew so much about God. He stored all the facts and memorized all the things. But he explained it something like this (my paraphrase):
“It was like God set in front of me a delicious apple cobbler. And I could intricately describe the crust. I could write a dissertation on the flavor profile. But I never took a bite of the actual thing. It took years, but God finally woke me up to say, taste it. Taste and see what my love does to your life. Taste and see how it reframes and sets ablaze everything you simply know about me in your head. The tasting of my goodness is the whole point. The living as though it’s true—as though the Bible is living and active, the grave is actually empty, and My grace is your only reality—is the reason I gave it all to you in the first place.”
So I’m asking my heart: what does it look like to taste and see today in this good, small life He’s abundantly given me? I think I’m going to ground my feet in the grass and listen to music about Him and believe what it says. I think I’m going to look deep into the eyes of my kids and see the gifts of His beauty and light right there on their faces. I think I’m going to hug my husband and try to make him laugh and cherish this gift of walking through almost twenty years side by side. Because who else could hold these two broken people together but an exceptionally good God?
His goodness is everywhere. The table is set. May I do more than observe it—may I taste and see.