Taste and See

A few days ago, my kids came to the dinner table and, right on cue, decided they didn't really like what I had prepared and they apparently weren't that hungry.  I had expected such a response since it was healthy and nutritious and I knew their taste buds had been quickly altered by yesterdays' pizza.  I had my response ready too.

"I'm sorry that you think you don't like all of what God created for your bellies.  Perhaps you've been eating too much of the "other" foods and your taste buds are confused."

They just kind of looked at me for a few moments.  I could see the gears turning in my 9-year-old's head, recognizing that the responsibility for the desire of this food lay on him and not on the food itself.  He ended up eating his food without complaint and, after a few bites, it turned out he liked it very much.  My 6-year-old was less in tune and just picked around saying she really wasn't hungry.  She ate a few bites and decided it was okay.

Then my daughter asked, "Mommy, why do we always have to eat healthy food?"  I reminded her that we don't and did she forget we had Dominos for lunch yesterday for our first day of school?  I also reminded her that we will sometimes have "junk" food (ie, anything that God didn't put into the ground or on a tree) and that our bodies can recover from the effects of that food if we mainly eat the stuff He created for us.  But yes, generally speaking, we don't buy dairy, pop, meat or refined carbs and that doesn't leave much else except God's good food that grows in the earth and not the factories.  (I'm serious; remove that stuff and see what's left).

Then my daughter asked, "But why did God make our taste buds so that we don't like certain foods He made?"

Wow, good question.  I told her that God didn't create us that way.  He created us to live off of and enjoy all the wonderful things He created.  Our bodies were designed for these kinds of foods.  But it has always been the enemy's design to wreck everything that God made for us, and in his evil plot, he designed a counterfeit to food.  Not only does the counterfeit injure our bodies but it tries to reset our taste pathways as well, until we think that donuts and pizza and pasta and cheese are more desirable than green beans and whole grains and oranges and almonds.  But the amazing thing about the original design is that we only need to expose ourselves to more and more of God's foods to restore our default settings.  Just amazing!  No matter how much junk we've eaten, we can restore our desires for God's yumminess just by indulging in it.

Are you getting this?  Do you understand how far-reaching this truth is?

We have a default setting created by the Omnipotent God, Himself, and nothing can destroy it.  Our setting can get distracted and injured and temporarily rerouted but all of that injury is just superficial.  The original is intact and cannot be destroyed.

Wow.

Taste and see, that the Lord is good.  (Ps. 34:8)

We're not just talking about food anymore.

We're talking about all of what God created: the desire to seek Him and commune with Him, the desire to house His presence in our spirit, the longing to be free of sin and follow God's voice.  All of these things were created in us by God and they cannot be undone.  They can be beaten down with our daily choices and we can get to the point where we don't even recognize the original design.  But giving our hearts and wills to God will restore these desires even more quickly than they were destroyed.

So even though there may be an adjustment period, where the food doesn't taste so good yet, there is a promise that if we continue to expose ourselves to the good stuff, and less to the bad, our desire for all of God's good things will continue to increase and increase until they are overflowing.

The Bible tells us to delight in the Lord, and He will give us the desires of our heart.  (Ps 37:4).  It's a Biblical promise that God will guide us towards understanding what our hearts truly desire.  He will open our eyes to it and we will see what it is we have been searching for all our lives.  I do not believe He will give us the desires of our broken, injured heart, but will show us who we really are, Who we really belong to, and what we really desire.


Now that's a love story worth pursuing.