Taste
Living next door to a portion of our grandies brings many opportunities to sit and sup together. Each time, I’m reminded of days delighted with my own toddlers and the battle of the banquet! Whether picnic or fete, the table tended to hold something they just couldn’t. Those toddlers now grown, have come up with a brilliant strategy for their own tinies who teeter at the tabletop, called the “no thank you bite.” This method invites the littles to take a bite and then say “no thank you” if they don’t like it, with the idea being that if they actually taste the dreaded delicacy, they just might like it. It works well, though occasionally, they grasp the “no thank you” but not the taking of the bite.
As we tiptoe towards together, I realize we each and every have the choicest meal before us. To taste and know that He is good. To know, we must taste, even if what lays upon the platter doesn’t seem pleasing to our palete. What appears may not appeal, but it comes no less from His perfect provision. How will we ever be ready for a banquet if we settle for a buffet because we can take only what we want and disregard that which we need most. A pleased palette does not equal a sustained soul.
Taste and see that Adonai is good. Psalm 34:8
Psalm 34 was written from the cave of Adullam, penned by David after seeking refuge from sources separate from His God as he searched for a way to slip past Saul. His route to refuge led him near the cities of Philistine and a narrow escape. Adullam’s cave, his hiding place, was not far from where a shepherd’s slung stone felled a giant. A stone’s throw from the life David was being prepared to live.
Crawling through the cave’s mouth was David’s farewell to all that diverted his desire for Pappa’s purpose and provision. Sometimes a diversion is the best dispatch to deliverance. Even Saul and his troops could not cause the Philistine forces to falter. The line Saul could not breech was the hem that would allow David to begin to behold once more.
I wonder how many times David opened his journal in that dark, dank cavity. Did he find the words penned in other seasons too raw to read? Did he dive deeper into the ordinary to discover how extraordinary his life truly had been? And was becoming? Did he look back at the things he didn’t have a taste for on platters of the past and realize how they set a table for him, in the presence of his enemies? Sometimes the lip of a cave becomes a turned table.
I’m sure David found a sweetness in his solitude and a slight frustration when the cave filled with those dry as seared summer, desperate, indebted and distressed. Bitter in their pursuit of better and bankrupt in believing for a break, they came. David, dealing with his own problems, may not have felt ready. We don’t often want problems to show up when we are dealing with our own.
They gathered and breath became ink, staining hearts and straining all preconceived notions of who God was, was going to be to them now. David sang in the presence of those with him, “I sought the Lord and he heard me. Those who trust Him are unmistakable. We found each other because that is true. He is wonderful and we are radiant.”
Those who came were not carbon copies of each other. Each had their own story and struggle. Each had encountered and experienced the world uniquely. Gathered since the garden, yet diverse in aspects that only the Gardner could adorn them with, they came together. It was not David’s experience alone, but theirs meant to be shared that garnered the gentle hymn. With string and strum they tore a hole in each other’s resistance until their greatest care was God.