Healthy Living

Savor The Flavor

by Terry Barlow
01/31/15
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Today before entering the library I decided to go for a “little walk with Jesus” and get some fresh air and sunshine first, while the sun was still high in the sky and the temperature was at its warmest. I did not regret it, it was an enlightening walk. I began to think of things that had happened earlier in the day which were highlights. I had enjoyed these experiences as they had come along, but now I was having opportunity to savor them more fully. It reminded me of some t shirts I had recently seen that read “savor the flavor.” I was at leisure now to savor the flavor of those experiences which had passed so quickly earlier. Had I passed immediately into the library and become busy with the many good resources there within those walls, I would never have revisited those encouraging experiences. I would merely have lived the first half of my day glossing over its events.  I would have tasted them, yes, but I would have tasted them without having truly savored them.  

 Boredom has been aptly defined as as overaccumulation of unexamined experience. And I think it was Socrates who said that the unexamined life is not worth living. How much of our lives do we live that way, never taking the time to plumb the sweet and more delightful depths of our experiences, not allowing them to fully register in our deeper consciousness? ( Of course this holds true of less pleasant experiences too.  For example if a little flash of jealousy arises over another's success, I can bring that to light in my "walk" as well, and then my Lord and I look at that together more closely, to see where it's coming from, rather than to try to deny that I ever felt it, which is not the way to rise above or overcome it.)   In that sense such unexamined events never become truly a part of us, they don’t become wholly assimilated into our beings. Thus, without being contemplated, they cannot really enter into our identities in a healthy way.

 So it’s not that the things necessary for contentment and fulfillment aren’t happening in our lives, God is affording us those experiences, but oftentimes we aren’t reflecting on them well enough to assimilate them. All too often we aren’t contemplating them with a growing gratitude in the context of our respective relationships with that great and infinitely good  Giver of perfect gifts. (James 1, v.16&17)