You Can Go Back for Seconds

If you’ve ever watched Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network you know how each episode begins… “Hey everybody, I’m Guy Fieri and we are rolling out looking for America’s greatest diners, drive-ins and dives.”

And if you are familiar with that show, you also know that it begins with Fieri in his red ’67 Camaro convertible as he travels across North America visiting small independent restaurants. If you are not hungry when the show begins, you surely are by the time it ends thirty minutes later.      

Maybe you are not a “Triple D” fan, but instead, you are a big fan of grandma’s home cooked chicken and dumplings. You might be strictly a meat and potatoes person and you don’t venture too far from your tried and tested classics. Instead, maybe you enjoy experimenting in the kitchen, trying out new recipes and ingredients. Or after a long and exhausting day at work or school you regularly dine on take-out meals, or better yet, you ask “do you deliver?” Often on New Year’s Eve we like to put together a spread of some of our favorite finger foods. (The picture in this post is from one such New Year’s Eve, when our daughters visited us in North Carolina.)

We all have different “tastes” when it comes to what we like to eat, and regardless of your food preferences, eating is a big part of life. The Bible uses a number of “taste” references in describing God’s goodness. Let’s look at one of those verses.   

“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” Psalm 34:8

You might be familiar with that passage of scripture, or at least the first half of it. Without getting bogged down in too much detail, I want to unpack the verse. The Hebrew word used here for “taste” is Ta’am, which means to perceive, to evaluate, or the testing of what is good by the means of our sense of taste. The word “good” is defining God as kind, merciful, gracious. The word “blessed” simply means happy, and the word “refuge,” to trust in and to put hope in.

So what does all this mean? When you order a meal at a fine restaurant it often comes out beautifully presented. But you can only know if it is truly tastes good by actually eating it and tasting its goodness. What this verse says to you today is give God a chance, try Him out, and put all your trust in Him. And in return, God promises to be merciful, kind, and gracious. He promises to be good. 

To keep v.8 in context we must also look at verses 9 and 10. Psalm 34:9 begins like this – “Fear the Lord, you his holy people.” Fear here is a healthy fear, not a fear that comes from being terrified. It is a fear that comes out of respect and reverence of God, and not wanting to offend Him. The reminder of v.9 and all of v.10 answers the “why” question – “For those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”

So, today, taste and see that the Lord is good! And you can always go back for seconds!

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