Message summary: Today we join David in his proclamation, "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!"

Do you recall a time when someone tried to get you to taste something just once? Most all of us will remember when we were children our mom would try to introduce us to something new by saying, "Try this just once" or "just one bite".

But even as adults it still happens. Here in Lancaster County we have some delicacies that are favorites to many locals but not a dish we're accustomed to from our Midwest background, foods such as scrapple* or pig's stomach. We've sampled scrapple but pig's stomach, ... not yet!

In the course of our chaplain work we stopped to greet a group of ladies from Southeast Asia who were on their lunch break. Although we couldn't understand them very well due to the language barrier they always seemed to appreciate our interest in their work in the factory, often responding with nodding heads and warm smiles.

During lunch one of the ladies was eating a rice dish with what looked like a tiny hand in it. I pointed to it and asked what is this "foreign" food object and learned it was a chicken's foot! While we were talking she picked it up and began to chew on it. I'm sure glad she didn't offer it to me or say, "Taste this chicken foot, just once. It’s really good!" I probably wouldn't do too well on the foreign mission field when it comes to the different cultural approaches to food groups.

What tremendous blessings our five senses add to our daily living, (taste, sight, smell, touch, and hear). We probably give less attention to taste and may even tend to take it for granted. But those who experience physical tastelessness testify how they miss it. In addition to taste those who have lost their sense of smell over an extended period of time due to having covid speak of how miserable it is to be unable to have a proper sense of smell, and how it affects their sense of taste as well.

Today, let's take a look at two of the five sens-es "Taste and see" mentioned in Psalm 34. In today's portion David is using two physical senses (taste and sight) to urge the child of God to recognize one of God's marvelous attributes, His goodness.

"That the LORD is good". I am so thankful that the eternal God is good! As many of us repeated a good phrase in church for a number of years, "God is good all the time. And all the time God is good!" What comfort and assurance that brings.

C.H. Spurgeon wrote,

I love the last portion of the verse. "Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him". "Blessed" is the type of word that's primarily used only in the Bible or in "religious" talk. It fundamentally means "how happy", which doesn't really sound as spiritual, but surely conveys the meaning. Psalm 144:14 states, "Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD".

The Hebrew word for "refuge" is "chacah" and is derived from the phrase "to flee for protection". What a glorious truth today! The refuge we have in God has not changed. The great hymn "How Firm A Foundation" states, "What more can He say than to you He hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled".

Today we join David in his proclamation, "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!"

Be encouraged today, (Hebrews 3:13)