The Wonder of Tasting the Goodness of God

I don’t think much about my sense of taste. In fact, I must admit that too often I don’t really even taste what I am eating. My mind is usually busy on something else: listening to the news, planning my day, reading email, or just plain rushing through the meal. The food goes in my mouth, gets chewed and swallowed, but not really appreciated. Do you do that? We take our food for granted and don’t pause to think about the mingling of the sweet and salty, the tangy and tart, the spicy and bland flavors. I cannot remember the last time I stopped to think how wonderful it is to have a sense of taste so that I can enjoy a variety of flavors. It’s something I suspect many, if not most, of us take for granted.

We can do the same thing with our ‘taste’ of the Word of the Lord. We can become too preoccupied with getting to the end of the reading for the day (and on to the next thing) that we don’t really pause to savor what the words say to us. We forget that the Bible is full of wonder and surprises even in verses we’ve read before.

Have you ever had the experience of reading or hearing a Bible verse and saying, “I never knew it said that”? There are depths of sweet and savory and tart and salty in the Bible that we only discover if we take time to pause and let the words really sink in. Like gulping our food without paying attention, we get some nourishment out of the Bible when we read it with half our attention, but we get a lot more enjoyment if we take time to really savor-both the food and the Bible.

Recently a friend told me that they went to a small French restaurant and ordered the cheese platter. He told me that the experience was fabulous, because he and his wife actually took time to taste, savor, and compare each individual cheese.

Likewise, we can pause in our reflections on the Bible to really ‘taste’ what God is saying. Psalm 34:8a admonishes us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” Consider just that one stanza. You don’t have to worry about the rest of the psalm right now. Really think about each word in the verse. You will have much to savor and meditate on, even in those 8 words.

What does the word ‘taste’ mean to you? Say it aloud and let it sink into your mind.
Do special foods or flavors come to mind as you think about taste?
What sensations come to mind when you hear the word?
Have you ever considered that you can ‘taste’ God?
How does God ‘taste’?
Are there descriptive words you can use to explain the ‘taste’ of God?

Do the same with the word ‘see’ and ‘Lord’ and ‘good’…How do each of these words evoke a deeper sense of the totality of God? Sit with the idea of tasting the goodness of God. Speak a prayer to the good God who gives us senses, including taste so we can come to know God more and more.

You can do this exercise with other verses. The psalms are especially suited to it because they are already broken into stanzas like songs (because that’s what they are). Another short verse to consider tasting and savoring is: “How sweet are thy words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” (Psalm 119:103)

There are other ways to savor the ‘taste’ of the Bible like lectio devino, journaling about a verse, really taking time to meditate with a certain citation, etc. The important thing is to take the time to really pause and savor the words and what they say to you. One wonderful thing about the Bible is that the same verse can say something different to you each time you read it! That will only happen if you take the time to ‘taste’ the word, though.

The final sense we will consider is smell. How do you find the wonder of God in the smells around you?