The Banquet
You enter a banquet hall; before
you is a long, beautifully carved wooden table set with fine china, crystal
goblets, polished silverware, and linen napkins. You may eat whatever you desire. Perhaps your first choice is a juicy steak,
cooked to perfection. With it you may
desire a baked potato, loaded with butter and sour cream, and topped with bacon
and green onion. A tossed salad, chock
full of your vegetables and topped with your favorite dressing, rounds out the
meal. Perhaps instead of steak, you
prefer a different dish? A crispy taco,
filled with flavorful meat, shredded lettuce, tomato, and two kinds of
cheese. Guacamole, chips, and salsa come
with the dinner. Whatever your favorite meal, you may eat to your heart’s
content. Next, of course, is
dessert. Would you care for a chewy
brownie, topped with creamy vanilla ice cream and hot fudge? Or perhaps a bowl of juicy, ripe red
strawberries with a dollop of whipped cream?
Would the opportunity to eat your
fill of your favorite dishes make you glad?
Just looking at this food and inhaling its wonderful aromas would make
most of us quite happy.
Unfortunately
for our waistlines and our pocketbooks, we cannot indulge in a feast like this,
at least not very often.
It is easy to imagine joy in a
feast of delicious food, but “joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16) from
eating God’s word?
Do we desire the word
of God as much as we desire delicious food?
Is reading God’s word something we eagerly anticipate?
Probably not, but this is a feast in which we
can indulge.
We need not fear gaining
weight and depleting our wealth; we only fear gaining knowledge of God’s wisdom
and love and depleting our sinfulness.
Oh God, creator of the entire
universe, I desire delicious food more than I desire Your word.
How infrequently I desire Your words as a
sumptuous banquet for my soul.
Forgive
me.
Change my heart, O God.
Create in me a create in me a hunger to feast
at the banquet of Your word.
Jeremiah 15:16 (NKJ) “Your words were found and I ate them,
and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of
hosts.”
