Can You Taste It?

This text, which a friend suggested, is fascinating me. The list of sins in the first verse is not random. It has a structure. Malice, or the delight in doing someone harm, is the seed from which deceit or guile begins to scheme and grow. The resulting hypocrisy, the pretending to be what is not, or hiding what is, leads to pining for another's good. The vine of envy snakes around one's heart bearing poisonous acrid tasting fruit: a word spoken with an evil tongue stinging the character of another.

Is this not the growth, the progression of the sins against love?

Oh, how this contrasts with the end of the chapter which precedes it. I sit here in hushed awe at the contrast — and with what follows. A baby. How guileless! How completely innocent, without pretense, naked.

And milk! Can anything be more pure and nourishing? No chalk-water heresies here! Sweet! I am absolutely loving this.

Peter is exhorting me to throw off my malice-tainted cloak — to remove any obstacles to accepting His love — and with the innocence of a baby, thirst for the taste of the truth in the Lord through His word — to put on my jammies, curl up with a fuzzy pillow, a cup of tea, and savor Him in me.

"The word is to be desired with appetite as the cause of life, to be swallowed in the hearing, to be chewed as cud is by rumination with the understanding, and to be digested by faith" [TERTULLIAN].

In contrast, sometimes I feel like I am chemically analyzing, picking apart, and shredding instead of simply receiving for the love of it — instead of simply letting it roll around in my mouth, dissolve on its own and become a part of who I am.

"Whosoever has not tasted the word to him it is not sweet it has not reached the heart; but to them who have experienced it, who with the heart believe, 'Christ has been sent for me and is become my own: my miseries are His, and His life mine,' it tastes sweet" [LUTHER].

Peter had tasted the kindness of the Lord. I have tasted that kindness as well. My challenge is to strive to be to someone else what the Lord has been to me. I would hope that I taste maybe a little like the One who loves me.

I am being surrounded by others who have also tasted that kindness — an expanding community of friends who are growing in His kindness, being molded in His meekness, walking in His humility, and reflecting His grace. Their taste unmistakably characterizes what they are marinating in. They taste like Jesus. And I thirst for their companionship, their presence, their friendship. Their sincere pure hearts, their genuine warm eyes, invite me closer to the One who is reflected in them. They invite me to reflect what they reflect — to taste the way they taste.

My prayer is also to hear the Word as sweetly as milk tastes to a baby — to be drawn to it as innocently and effortlessly as a newborn is drawn to the breast. Instinctively, without thinking, without analyzing, my soul knows where its next meal is coming from. It knows the fount from which the nourishment flows.

Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Happy indeed!