Picky eaters.
There’s fussy. And then there’s discerning.
What do we do when our tastes, our preferences, our cravings - are out of sync with what’s on our plate?
Every morning we wake up and are served a conveyor belt of moments. Tasks. Interruptions. The people we live and work with. The random people we come across. Food. Jobs. Weather. The place we live. The time we live in. Teeth to brush, breakfast to make, kids to dress, buses to catch, people to see, conversations to navigate, problems to solve, emails to answer, work to get through.
It doesn’t stop. The sweet and the bitter. The pleasant and the mundane. It all keeps coming.
Some of us would rather go hungry than eat the food we’re offered.
And the algorithm offers a tempting alternative. You can scroll, binge, daydream - subsisting off other peoples’ 2D scraps. No risk, no bitterness, no cost. But no nourishment.
Bloated minds. Starving souls. Stuffed with the scent of meals that were never ours.
But not all pickiness is bad.
I think there’s a wise kind of choosiness.
With the thousands of things you could consume each day - and I don’t just mean online - I suggest we should be discerning.
What will genuinely nourish my soul?
What will feed the things in me that I want to grow?
And conversely, how can I starve the things I’d like to see waste away?
As I said in my last post, developing your taste is the key.
Sure, you could let the Netflix and Instagram overlords funnel their plat-du-jour bin-juice down your gullet every day for the rest of your life. But why settle for bin-juice when you could have fillet steak?
There is a feast and it begins with the bread of life.
When we taste and see that the Lord is good, our taste buds are altered. His Word become as sweet as honey, refreshing and nourishing the soul.
It teaches us to discern between a good meal that has some bitterness, and a bad one.
Because the thing is, even the best meals sometimes have a bitter tinge. Suffering. Waiting. Humility. Forgiveness. Service.
But when God prepares the meal, even the bitterness nourishes.
By contrast, junk food is easy, looks good, is emotionally satisfying in the moment, but leaves us hungry and our soul thin. It doesn’t build us up.
Scripture trains our palate. It teaches us to crave what is truly good. To humbly receive the feast, even when we know it might not be perfect or easy to digest.
Because even in the most humble or difficult life, God prepares good meals for his people. Both through his word and through his world.
Taste and see. There is a feast.
