What God’s Word Says About Food Mfano

Imagine a world where Christmas comes three times a day—a steady stream of gifts, all day, every day. Exciting, right? Now take the mental leap with me from that scenario to your kitchen table. Picture the pile of presents God has delivered to that well-worn spot. Recall Thanksgiving dinners loaded with juicy turkeys and steaming sides. Remember special birthday dinners where your family has blown out the candles atop so many cakes. Think of Sunday suppers and pizza nights, spilled milk and sticky oatmeal gloop. In hindsight, those meals come to mind with a warm glow around them, don’t they? Have you ever wondered why food is involved in so many of our best memories and most cherished relationships? Have you ever considered if that’s by design instead of by default? God never just fills our bellies. He fills our homes. He fills our hearts. My own dining room table is a hand-me-down from my granny. She bought it in the sixties at a yard sale and stripped it and refinished it herself. It needs to be sanded and finished once again, but I can’t bear to erase the spot where the stain from her coffee cup remains. It’s a reminder of the many, many blessings God gave me through her. Many childhood memories involve the table. Some are fancy—candlelit meals eaten on fine china on Christmas eve. Others are more pedestrian—piles of spaghetti on paper plates, ham sammies with the crust cut off. All of them are gifts, given to me by a God who loves me. When David wanted to express his gratitude for God’s blessings, he used food as a frame of reference. He could have said, “look and see that the Lord is good.” We can surely see God’s gifts all around us. He could have said, “listen and see that the Lord is good.” We hear His goodness in a child’s laughter, in a nightingale’s song, in the roaring of a waterfall or the dribble of a mountain stream. But David chose an alternate sense to call us to worship. He chose our sense of taste. "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). A few chapters later in Psalm 103, David uses eating imagery again to remind us of God’s many blessings. "He satisfies you with good things; your youth is renewed like eagles." (v. 5) Satisfaction. Renewed energy. These are the benefits of food. What if each bite is a missionary, sent to remind us who He is and what He has done? Here’s a truth so simple we miss it daily—food is a blessing from God. Let me say it louder for the people in the back—food is a blessing from God! We live in a culture with a volatile relationship with food. Either food is everything, the key that unlocks a happy, fulfilling life. Or food is the enemy, a monster we must tame at any cost. Perhaps it’s because our bellies experience true hunger so rarely (if ever) that we forget that fundamentally food is a gift, graciously provided by a generous God so that we might taste and see that He is good.