taste
Three days I bake cookies as big as my hand—golden, caramel-sugar sweet, studded with chocolate and candy, a palm-full of sweet for the kids we will love in our church, with our church, on the last Sunday before Christmas. A fat stack of self-sealing bags imprinted with snowflakes, for the cookies, sits on the bar in our kitchen, awaiting a label that will herald the sweetest sweet of all—
Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness His government and peace there will be no end.
Get a taste of that and never be hungry again, that’s the promise. The craving for every sweet is only an invitation to hunger for this soul-filling sweet, for real goodness, this Advent blessing, the promise of God coming to rescue, bringing His light, His reigning love, His everlasting peace—everlasting peace, if we believe it (Do you believe it?), of a good government that overrules every other. In the middle of the storm-tossed truth of living, the black brokenness of human motivation, the pain that just about knocks us out of the boat where sometimes He seems (to us) to be sleeping (but He says, Oh where is your faith?) comes this light, this promise that wholeness and harmony, His healing shalom, is always coming and will never end. His everlasting peace is coming for you.
The real gift isn’t the cookies at all, but the delivery of this good news, and we give that every week, not just the last Sunday of the year. But just as God keeps coming small, in bite-sized portions of a glory that would otherwise explode our taste buds, appetizers and profiles our mortal bodies can handle, can experience without shattering, we give the kids a cookie as a conveyance of love, of the sweetness of God.
Taste and see that the LORD is good, the Psalmist wrote. Taste and see, let all your senses know in their tiny, childlike way, that the LORD is good.
I put a warm cookie on a napkin and hand it to Riley.
“Thought you’d like a taste,” I say, grinning, and she shares the smile first, extending her hand.
“Mmm, these cookies are so good,” she says. Dots of melted chocolate make beauty marks on her cheeks.
When we taste the goodness of God, when we feast on Him with joy, He changes us. He makes us truly beautiful, the way He is beautiful.
I am the bread of life, Jesus said. So, we chew slowly the bread, the wine He called His blood. We feast on Him. We taste and see that He is good, and we heal. The touch of Him makes beauty marks all over us, returning us to the beauty, the goodness, with which we were created.
That word, good, when God created everything in the beginning and called it ‘good’, in Hebrew towb, also means ‘beautiful’, and as usual for that language, conveys a round, full idea—not merely a quality of appearance but God’s own harmony, His integrity, His peace, impressed on His creation, His image given, left behind as an inheritance. It’s always this way, that the act of creating leaves the ghostly presence, the reflection, the flavor, of the Creator in its wake, like fingerprints. I recently heard another writer say that below the depths of every piece of writing, the author leaves behind the lurking presence of a weird, alien fish, a shadowy thread, a bit of their own essence. This tiny human truth, once again, only points to a greater Fact: God gives Himself. Again and again and again. A perpetual feast of His goodness.
“I’m glad you like them,” I say to Riley, who closes her eyes and chews, blissful.
“Yeah, these cookies are so good,” she says again.
Riley is both an enthusiastic taster—she en-joys every bite—and a thorough encourager. She pours out the goodness God keeps pouring into her, placing it in the palm, warm and sweet.
“I hope the kids appreciate these,” Kevin says, ambling into the kitchen to refill his water bottle. He feels protective of me, of the resources I have put into baking 140 cookies, nearly 12 dozen, for the kids. Every morning, on my way out the door to take Adam to school, I’ve left sticks of butter out to soften for the morning effort. “I hope they don’t end up thrown away half-eaten or forgotten and smooshed somewhere.”
I put another cookie on a napkin and pass it to him.
“Taste,” I say again, grinning.
Both of us grew up with solid training against wastefulness, children of war-rationed parents whose childhood memories include not enough. Both of us feel, often irrationally, triggered when we see piles of food scraped off plates into the trash. We will end up discussing this on the run for days, this begrudging feeling, the desire to withhold the gift from those who, in all probability, will not fully appreciate it, who might just waste it entirely. I feel this just as keenly as Kevin does. And yet, God will bring us around to this, that He gives Himself generously, without withholding the gift of His grace, His goodness, His life sacrificed, to everyone, even those who will waste the gift, who will discard it outright like trash, even though it cost Him everything.
Taste and see that I am good is the invitation of Advent, and even some of us who love Him will let the gift go half-eaten while we chase a thousand distractions through the season.
We need not withhold the blessing, because God never does. We can give it away, freely, wildly, holding nothing back, trusting Him to keep on giving.
“Mmmm, delicious,” Kevin says, taking a bite on his way back upstairs, and already I see the goodness blooming, as a smile spreads across his cheeks.
