Taste
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Taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are they who trust in him! -Psalm 34:8
In our western post-enlightenment culture, we spend most of our time and energy thinking about things. We might be one of the many who sit at desks all day working on a computer and thinking. We even reduce our faith to thinking - considering it a belief system - a set of tenets that we have determined that we mentally agree with.
But our tradition is not just about thinking, although we are called to love God with all our mind. We’re also called to love God with all our heart, strength and soul - in other words, with our whole selves. Ours is a very embodied faith. It is something that we somehow taste with our whole being. I love the image used by the psalmist. We taste life with God, rather than think about it. The image reminds me of how my whole self feels when I take the first bite of a really, really good creme brulee.
The world is full of serious problems and terrible suffering, and naturally, we think about these things a lot - and we worry about whether it will affect us, and ponder what could possibly be the solution for it all. But as we sadly know, we often have very little control over the forces and cycles of this world, and thinking that we do is often a recipe for unnecessary stress.
Like children, we’re called to trust in our loving God to handle the things we are not able to even understand, let alone fix. We are also called to trust that God will make it clear to us when we are actually being called to get up to act or to speak out. Until then, we do what we can to keep our whole selves in the presence of God, tasting the life of the Spirit, so that the life, energy and time we have been given can be offered fully and freely to God and neighbor in hope.
This is what saints are known for - living God-steeped lives. This Sunday we’ll be celebrating All Saints Day, and considering how we, too, can live more fully into our full lives with God.
