Taste and See

An older man sits down with a group of children and says, Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

That is verse eleven of this psalm, and it tells you what kind of a man is speaking in verse eight. He is not a young enthusiast recommending an experiment. He is old enough to be teaching, and he has already told them where his material came from: I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. Then, a couple of lines later, he steps out of his own story and refers to himself in the third person as a stranger might: this poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. That is a man who has watched his own rescue from far enough away to describe it as evidence.

And the invitation he gives is deliberately physical. Taste, then see. Not consider, then decide, then possibly risk something. Tasting is the small irreversible act; seeing is what comes after it. He is telling children that this is not a subject you can assess from a safe distance, and he is not embarrassed to admit that he learned it that way himself, out of fear rather than out of curiosity.

He is honest about the terms too. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, he says a couple of verses on, but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing. Strength runs out. Seeking does not.

Which means secondhand faith is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure to have ever put anything on the table. You cannot get the knowledge first and pay afterwards.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 316 is Fear Before Him (Psalm 96:9).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna