Taste and See that the Lord is Good

Here is the reflection I gave last night at the annual thanksgiving service. Enjoy!

I must say, I was sort of appalled when I found out the thanksgiving service was going to be a whole week before thanksgiving. I feel fairly rushed along, lately, by the world.
Before I’ve ever given a thought to the beginning of the school year, there are school supplies in my face. Well before I have been able to give a millisecond of thought to the various Halloween costumes longed for by each of my children, there is candy everywhere, beckoning me to buy it, to rush ahead to the next thing, before I’ve had a second to catch my breath for where I am.

That’s the tendency of this modern world. To rush on to the next thing before the thing we’re doing now has even had a moment to be considered. But does thanksgiving, does gratitude, bear the same risk? The same troubling rush? Is it very bad that we’re meeting a whole week early to pause and give thanks, together? Can we be rushed too far? Even in giving thanks?

When I thought about this evening, I immediately thought of psalm 34. David writes,
‘I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.’

There isn’t a moment when David isn’t ready to bless the Lord. To say it the other way,
he is always ready to give thanks. He writes this psalm early in his time of running away from Saul. It’s the sort of moment when I would still be reeling from the tragic blow of lost friendships, lost status, lost hopes, when I would curled in my bed fussing at God for not aligning himself with my expectations.

But David finds the praise of God, at such a moment, in his mouth. A most fitting expression as we head into next week.

In verse 8 he says
‘Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!’

Is the Lord good? You will be able to discover if this is so with your senses.

Thanksgiving Dinner is all about the mouth and the eyes, isn’t it? There’s the food, the standing in the kitchen picking over the turkey carcass in that last moment when you should be putting all the food on the table. There’s the tasting of every single dish,
either made by you or brought and set upon the table. There is the abundance of savory and sweet, the snacking, the eating too much, the one last mouthful.

Is the Lord good? Open your mouth. Was the food good?

And the feast of the eyes! Won’t you clean, a little, if thanksgiving dinner is at your house? Won’t you rush around at the last minute, shoving stuff under the couch, kicking shoes into the closet? Even if you aren’t bothering with fancy china, you’ll probably try to place each setting evenly, knives and forks and spoons rubbed to a sparkle.

I like, at my table, to get a big bunch of flowers and arrange them into a lot of little vases, all over the table, so that the candle light and the glow of the flowers talk to each other. I can do this because the turkey is Matt’s affair.

Is the Lord good? Are your eyes open?

David goes on,
‘Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!
The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
Come, O children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.’

If your mouth is full of turkey and gratitude, how will you find room on your tongue
for the ugliness of gossip, of envy, of bitterness? The one who has enough has only good things to say.

But, of course, most of the time it seems like we don’t have enough, doesn’t it?
Especially in the days stretching out between Black Friday and Christmas. I think I might easily be likened, in the days between thanksgiving and Christmas, to a young lion. The gnawing hunger in the gut makes the young frantic. I know, at least one child, in my house, hits a growth spurt each month. There’s always one small person around my table who can’t get enough, who stays on past the others, just eating, as if everything depended on it. A young lion has to hunt. all. the. time. to be able to have enough, to not starve.

It’s easy to look at all the needs, all the desire, and conclude that there is just not enough. Not only can you not do it, neither can God.

But, says David, however you are behaving, whatever you think about it, if you are a person who loves Jesus, who is held firmly in the grasp of his grace and love, who seeks truly after him, then, you actually do not lack any good thing. He has given and will give you everything that you need. How can this be?

David writes,
‘The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous
and his ears toward their cry.’

Can you see that the Lord is good? He can see that you are in need. He can hear the cries of your mouth. God loves to save the one who calls out to him.

It’s easy to say this. It’s a very Christian thing to say. But it’s more true than anything you can imagine.Jesus doesn’t just want to save you into eternal life. He wants to help you now, with all the things that trouble and concern you. He wants not only your mouth to be the thing that blesses him, he wants your mouth to be the empty thing that he fills. When you are lacking, when you are anxious and sad, when you read the news and despair, when you find that someone you love stops talking to you, when you discover that the amount of money in your account can’t possible stretch over all that is required, that is the moment to open wide your mouth, to focus your eyes on the face and person of Jesus and to let your vocal cords cry out to him.