Encouragement

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  "Taste and see that the LORD (Yahweh) is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him."  I am glad for this invitation in the 8th verse of the 34th psalm to come and experience personally the goodness of God.  There aren't many such places in Scripture where we are so summoned to try God like this.  This sense of God's goodness has to be more than a theory or a tenet of our particular theology.  It is meant to be substantiated regularly in our everyday sense experience, because we are physical creatures who relate to the world through the physical senses of our bodies.  We are being invited in this psalm to experience the goodness of God in practical ways that are meaningful to each one of us. 
 Remember that of all the senses the sense of taste is the one that most deeply internalizes what began as a stimulus outside of ourselves.  In tasting what existed outside of me I am taking it deep into my being and awareness, more so I think even than with the sense of smell.  God is challenging us to sample his goodness in ways and areas where we might have little to no experience of it as yet.  God wants to nourish our inner life with more goodness than we've known, to make that goodness more experential.  It's as if God says, "Take this specific goodness deep into yourself, and let it become part of you."   And in that certain nourishment is health and protection, and the hiddenness of a refuge, a special place where secrets are shared.

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