Milk and Chocolate

by Scott Kaczorowski

One of my favorite parts of eating chocolate is the milk. Now don’t get me wrong– I am not a great milk fan. You won’t find me rushing into the refrigerator on a hot day (or any other day) to chug a chug of milk. In fact, as far as beverage preferences go, it is more towards the bottom of my list. I would much rather have water, soda, juice, coffee, or tea (not necessarily in that order!). I’ll have it in cereal, but I just about never drink the stuff straight up. Unless I’m eating chocolate. For whatever reason, there is something in chocolate that creates a deep desire in me for milk. Craving might even be the right word to describe it. That moment comes when half-eaten brownie in hand my palate starts to scream that otherwise unusual statement, “I want milk!” And I love that moment when the milk hits my mouth and I am refreshed and satisfied. The other night it made me think of David’s words: “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food…” (Psalm 63:5). How wonderful to be satisfied in God the way we are satisfied in good food.

As far as my relationship with milk goes, it is an interesting experience to have something that does not usually appeal at all become so desired and so satisfying. But maybe you feel about God the way that I usually feel about milk. You know that it’s good for you. You know that is has lots of vitamin D. You may even have rattling around in your head what the commercials have been telling you for years it does for your body–good. Similarly, you know that God is great and all glorious and completely and totally satisfying. But if you were honest with yourself, you really would rather have soda.

Of course the analogy breaks down because in the case of milk I genuinely believe that the problem is not with me. I am sure that many would beg to differ, but according to my taste buds, milk really is quite inferior as a straight up drink. But not so with God! If we are not satisfied in God it’s not because of any problem with God. It’s because in our natural selves our spiritual taste buds are too dead to relish what is really satisfying.1 We are spiritually like the guy who would rather eat roach infested dirt out of a garbage can than enjoy the most succulent steak dinner.

But there is hope. Just like chocolate produces a craving for milk, so the Lord is able to stir up in us a deep desire for Himself. That He then satisfies.  In a similar (though not identical) vein, Jonathan Edwards wrote:

The sanctifying influence of the Spirit of God rectifies the taste of the soul, whereby it savors those things that are of God, and naturally relishes and delights in those things that are holy and agreeable to God’s mind, and like one of a distinguishing taste, chooses those things that are good and wholesome, and rejects those things that are evil; for the sanctified ear tries words, and the sanctified heart tries actions, as the mouth tastes meat.2

May we be satisfied in Him as with fat and rich food. May He produce in us a craving for Himself and then satiate it. Like that glass of milk. Only better.

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2-3).

Footnotes:
1I probably owe the concept of appreciating what is really satisfying to another writer and/or speaker (most likely John Piper) but the taste buds analogy is my own.
2Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 4: The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen (New Have: Yale University Press, 1972), 437.

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