Pull up a chair.
Read a little.
Milk and Honey is my invitation to make room for a deeper kind of nourishment. Walk through Scripture with me, one reflection at a time, and discover God’s goodness in the middle of real life.
Put the kettle on. Stay a while.
Sweetness in the small things.
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Taste & See
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him! Psalm 34:8 NLT
Taste and see? Exactly. First we’ll taste, and then maybe we’ll see. Our skepticism reaches beyond our plates and to our souls. It’s hard to trust anything we see today. Everything seems to have a perfect filter or a catch. We’re not quick to agree that something is good or even real until we experience it ourselves. Whether that means taking a bite or taking off a mask—we want to see how things really are, not just how they appear to be. We safeguard ourselves, from our lips to our hearts, so our expectations don’t collide with reality; we’d rather have them coincide. What happens when the shiny veneer comes off and we’re left with disappointment? Our walls go up. We knew it. What seemed too good to be true was. But you know what’s even more disappointing than unmet expectations? Never having a bite at all.
This devotional is an invitation to taste and see that God is good. With God, there is no façade. God doesn’t tell us he’s good and demand we believe it. He invites us to bring our skepticism and
our spoons and to taste with our own lips rather than hear about his love from someone else or make assumptions about him. He wants us to discover his goodness is real because our taste buds reveal it’s true: He is sweeter than honey straight from the comb.
We’re going to taste test our way through Scripture as we savor a verse from each book of the Bible—Genesis to Revelation. Together, we’ll dig in for ourselves to what the psalmist wrote: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8). Why? Because God wired us for nourishment.
Our stomachs remind us of our physical need every few hours. Our souls remind us of our spiritual need constantly. We feel the ache in the marrow of our bones for something more out of life. More than money. More than stuff we buy with that money. More than a “perfect” reflection in the mirror. Is the solution just that—do we only need a little more? But we’re dry and hungry still. We feel the emptiness and the dissatisfaction still. Jesus knew we would feel this way: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:13-14). Satisfaction is here, now.
There’s a reason Jesus often uses food and drink metaphors to offer us a tangible grip on spiritual things: We know, not only in our heads but in our hearts and lives, the reality of things unseen. Spiritual truths are as real as the water we drink and the food we eat.
Why live constantly trying to curb our appetites? Why keep going back to the same well that’s proven to leave us thirsty? We don’t want to live in spiritual survival mode, barely getting by, when all along, Jesus offers us abundant life. The promise of satisfaction
is found in his nail-imprinted hands, proof he gave his life so we could be nourished to life eternally.
From beginning to end, nourishment is woven into Scripture. From the fruit on the trees of Eden to the manna in the middle of the desert, all the way to the Last Supper and looking ahead to the marriage feast of the lamb; it is so clear God wants to satiate the hunger within our souls. He wants to provide for us. He wants to sustain us. More than anything, he wants to overflow our lives so they drip with his abundant goodness, inviting others to taste too. So as we begin our journey of nourishment in the garden and make our way through the land of milk and honey, may we have an appetite for the bread and the cup when Jesus holds it out to us. May we gladly receive the life that completely quenches our thirst yet forever makes us hungry for more of him.
I wrote this for myself as much as I wrote this for you because I know it’s easy to become undernourished in life and wake up worried, dissatisfied, burdened, discouraged, and insecure. It seems we’re always running on empty. At one point, I found myself knowing a lot about Jesus but missing Jesus. His love forever radiates warmth; I had just wandered away from the fire. It clicked when I realized the greatest commandment isn’t to know about God but to love God with everything we are. The thing is, the more you love someone, the more you want to know them. So let’s come back to our first love.
We don’t want our walk with God to turn into a restrictive diet, because then we dip our toes into religion rather than relationship. Coming to Jesus consistently—not out of obligation but
because of a personal invitation to be satisfied in him—nourishes our souls. That’s where the life is. As we take in the pure milk of the Word, we’ll mature and be prepared to receive greater nourishment that takes us deeper. We become fortified. We move from milk to honey. We walk with Jesus and then learn to run with endurance and strength in the race he’s set before us. We enter into the unfolding story of God, and it energizes us and awakens our souls back to life—all because we’ve come to the table. Pull up a chair; you belong here. My hope is that you’ll find “good” only scratches the surface. Come, taste, and see.
Let this be your invitation
to make room for a quiet moment.
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