Taste and See
There is something devastatingly human about dissatisfaction. It’s not that we aim at becoming malcontents, it’s just that we feel unable to fully grasp moments of joy. Here in the west, we surround ourselves with comforts, especially in this year of the pandemic, in the vain hope that these things will convey upon us the contentment we’re looking for. My inbox has been filled in the last ten months with emails from loads of shops persuading me that the key to happiness right now is their products. I enjoy clothes and homeware probably a good deal more than I should, but even I’m not foolish enough to believe that the plushness of an Egyptian cotton bedspread, or a bouncing pair of Nike Airs has the power to propel me into more than a moment’s good mood.
It’s not just in material comforts that we seek to find bliss, it’s in the arts and nature too. Who among us hasn’t turned to a story in either film or book form over the last ten months to transcend the current gloom, or instil a sense of hope? And even when we were only allowed an hour outside, there were still scenes of indescribable beauty to be found as the summer sun set over sleeping and silent streets.
Yet even in these moments, there is a bitter taste in my mouth. A sense of the impossible transience of the thing, or of my inability to fully occupy the moment of beauty I am beholding, tasting, hearing, seeing. I don’t just want to listen to good music, something aches inside me to be in it, to inhabit it, to keep it living around me always and not see it lost to the irresistible march of time. I fully admit that I am romantic. But as I said at the outset, I don’t think this yearning is just me, I think we all know it.
Longing. We’re creatures of longing. It’s etched into the stuffof our souls, and whilst we may dull it down, dress it up, quash it, ignore it, drown it – it’s still there, whispering in our ears and disquieting us. So, let’s turn and look it in the face.
There is a word in one of the Bible’s original languages: ‘hevel’. It’s translated as ‘meaningless’, or ‘vanity’, but it’s also the word for breath. It appears most in a section on the meaning of life written by a somewhat mysterious philosopher (as all philosophers like to be). His opening words are these:
‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’
says the Teacher.
‘Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.’
Ecclesiastes 1:2
We may find this depressing in a book about purpose, but don’t we feel the truth of it? All the glimpses and snatches of beauty we know are themselves passing away, fading – like a cloud of breath on a winter’s morning. They are sweet, now bitter. They are glorious, now gone.
But the philosopher’s aim isn’t to make us give up on our attempts to find lasting fullness of joy, it’s to help us see the one from whom joy flows: God. To help us trace all these echoes and murmurs of beauty back to their source. To show us that the whispers we hear come from his mouth, for Godhimself is Beauty, Joy and Peace.
Take a moment with me now – if you don’t believe in God, briefly suspend your disbelief – and imagine: the most radiantsight of beauty you have ever beheld. Iridescent, perfect, precious, yet endangered and delicate. Now, instead of seeing it pass into dust, see it grow before your eyes, subsuming every moment and molecule in and outside of the universe, incorporating all of time so that it can never fade, so that no danger can threaten it. See it explode into life around you, dancing with vitality and strength so that you know it will go on forever singing for joy and oh, how it sings! And there is ahand extended to you from its centre – an offer to come inside it and dwell there, undyingly.
This is what Jesus offers us. A hand has been extended to pull us into the very heart of God, the heart of glory, ofirrepressible and unending joy that will satisfy our every thirst. An invitation to dwell with the One for whom is all our unquenchable, gut-wrenching longing. Isn’t this an offer worth investigating?
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Psalm 38:4
To see this idea better expressed, please read this shortsermon by C.S. Lewis, in particular the paragraph starting ‘In speaking of this desire’.