Different foods, different appetites

Farmers are bringing in the harvest. On our travels in the countryside, we find lots of farm shops, often with integral cafes. Seeing the abundance and variety of food available to us reminded me afresh just how blessed we are. There are countless people around the world not so blessed. I know that some in our country have financial pressures, which reduce their food options but also there are those who can’t appreciate the available food because they have a poor appetite, due to physical or mental ill-health.

The Bible often uses the analogy of food and appetite, when speaking of our desire for God. Some people have an appetite for religion but not God himself; others an appetite for neither. The God of the Bible tells us that this lack of appetite or desire for him is the result of ill-health, not physical or mental but spiritual.

Our desires and appetites are dependant in some measure on our ability to appreciate and enjoy. As a child, girls were of little interest to me, but as a teenager it was a different story: my interest was awakened!

I believe that God is in the business of stirring our spiritual desires at some point in our lives. How and when this spiritual puberty or awakening occurs will be as varied as people are different. What is more important is how to respond to it when it does.

In the Old Testament God says: ‘ …you who have no money, come buy, eat and drink…without money and without cost’. God has an abundance for us and our willingness to receive is all the ‘payment’ he requires. In the New Testament Jesus sharpens the focus. ‘Don’t work for food that spoils but for that which will endure to eternal life.’ His listeners asked, ‘What is this work God requires?’ In effect Jesus answered, ‘Believe and throw in your lot with the one he sent,’ obviously referring to himself. He tells us that he is to be our spiritual bread, our essential sustenance.

We are invited to, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.’ Psalm 34.