August 3
August 3
Nothing you experience on this side of eternity is more amazing than God’s grace.
I love to watch the Food Network. I enjoy watching gifted chefs work with the plants and animals that God created to produce beautiful, tasty, and satisfying food on the plate. I have learned so much about cooking good food as I have watched, and I love that God has given us such a wide variety of things to eat. The world he has created is a wonderful banquet table. Perhaps it is my love for the culinary arts that helps me appreciate the beauty of the word pictures in Isaiah 55:
Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David. (Isa. 55:1–3)
God knows that people are spiritually hungry. People are constantly looking for life and for peace and satisfaction of heart. God has wired this spiritual hunger into us, so that it would drive us to him.
This passage is a gracious invitation to the spiritually hungry and thirsty to come to the one and only place where your heart can be filled. The physical things of this earth are not designed to satisfy your spiritual hunger. The most wonderful experiences or relationships or possessions in this life will not fill your heart. So, with a tender and compassionate heart, God says, “Come to me. I have prepared for you the one meal that will fill and satisfy that hunger in your heart.” He says, “And you don’t have to pay for the food I give you. It is free!” Then he asks the question of questions: “Why would you work hard for and spend money on what cannot satisfy?” People do this every day. At great cost and with hard work people run after and consume things that will never satisfy the hunger that drives them.
What about you? At what table do you sit, hoping that your hungry heart will be satisfied? Do you hear the Lord’s invitation to you to come to him, eat from the banquet of his grace, and live? What he offers is free, because the Son has paid the cost.
May we come again and again to the only one who has the bread that will satisfy our hearts.