“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
I simultaneously love and despair over these words in Psalm 34 (can I admit that?). I love them because they are a divine invitation to stop, sit with and commune with God. Do we make it a regular practice to consider how unbelievable it is to be invited to His table? We, the once broken and rebellious enemies of God who bring nothing but our sin, are invited by grace through faith in Christ to experience Him in the fullness of His goodness! Christian, the Gospel is the divine feast we come to again and again, never to move on to another dish.
Yet I told you I despair over this verse David pens in this song. For though I’m amazingly invited to sit with my God moment to moment (Jesus would use the word “abide” in John 15), how often I decline to do that very thing! How often I converse with my wife or parent my boys not after first feasting on Gospel truths, but rather how often my response is more fleshly than I wish (how different I would respond to trials in my home after first meditating on the fullness of God’s divine blessings given me in Christ!). How often I’m hurried throughout my day, feeling very productive in some small sense as I’ve tackled many items on my pastoral to-do list, only to realize about myself at the end of the day I’ve been more Martha than Mary in neglecting the better portion of sitting with my Savior (Luke 10:38-42). How self-reliant I so often am in the trials of life, pushing away from the divine table of goodness to “push through” on my own, forgetting that to push away from God’s table is to also push away from the people of God whom He has given to be with me in all the ups and downs of life.
Perhaps in reading the above paragraph you can relate. Maybe in skimming my personal list above you are like me: prone to beat yourself up as you think through your own fleshly responses, episodes of self-reliance, days where God was an afterthought (and couldn’t the list just be longer if space permitted!). And oh, how sin is a robber of our communion with Him! We know we are in Christ and our union with Him can never be severed because our salvation hinges on our God, but it just feels like we aren’t tasting or seeing a whole lot. So then what do we do?
I repeat what I’ve had to tell myself many times over: we come back to the Gospel, to the Bread of Life, and we feast on its bountiful spread until we are satisfied. And I feel confident in saying this: our God loves to daily serve fresh meals at His table, that in communing with Him we would delight in Him all the more! So we don’t come to “spiritual disciplines” begrudgingly, but we come expectantly, that we will meet with Him and be fed! Let me encourage in practice:
The next time you open your Bible to sit with God, ask first: “God, you want to be known. Show me a timeless and timely truth about yourself from your Word, that I may be fed and equipped for whatever lies ahead on this day”.
The next time you come to gather with God’s people, reflect first: “Father, by your Son’s work I am one with these people. Let us taste and see of your goodness as we serve and love one another.”
The next time you hold the wafer and juice as we take the Lord’s Supper, pause and consider before ingesting: “Jesus, your shed blood and broken body for me? As I look and taste now of this literal food and drink, let me remember and celebrate your goodness that grants me access to the heavenly feast to come. Thank you!”
Taste. See. The goodness of God is abounding. He invites you to be filled.
by Pastor Nathan Fox