Wednesday: Everything Has a New Taste
WEEK 32
WEDNESDAY
EVERYTHING HAS A NEW TASTE
Philippians 4:4-7
Jesus spoke of salt that had lost its savor (see Matt 5:13). A great many live in a savorless universe, a universe without taste. The Christian faith not only puts meaning into life, it puts taste into life.
Here was a woman who was about as distracted and upset a person as I have ever seen outside a mental hospital. I could do little except try to quiet her. But “Mary” “loved her into the arms of Jesus.” She saw in the face of Mary what she wanted. And she found it! One moment she was one kind of person, and the next moment she was another. She wrote one of the most beautiful letters I have seen, and it included these words, “Everything has a new taste when you are a Christian, doesn’t it?” It does!
A man who was once grumpy made his surrender to Christ in an Ashram, and put it this way, “I always woke up with reluctance and afraid to meet the day, and said to myself, ‘Good Lord, it’s morning!’ Now since I’ve surrendered, I run to the window and joyfully exclaim: ‘Good morning, Lord!’” these people in the Acts were saying just that, for Jesus was a sunrise to them. In him all their sunsets had turned to sunrises. They greeted life with a cheer and a song!
Bishop Arthur Moore called a man standing at the train station to the car window and said, “Is anybody in this town enjoying religion?” The man replied, “Them that’s got it is.” That’s it. These people had religion; or better, religion had them, had them all over, and they were enjoying it all over. One man hadn’t seen another man for many years. The second man said, “Why, you don’t look any worse than you did then.”
The neighbors of the disciples saw a radical and profound difference. They had struck Joy!
Somebody has said, “Joy is always found on the other side of the cross.” At the cross you are cleansed of a thousand conflicting desires and emotions; thus cleansed, your heart sings. But it can only sing as it is clean. Sin is sad, for sin has nothing behind it backing it. But goodness is glad, for the sum total of reality is behind it.
O Divine Spirit, relate me to God fully and wholly, and then my life shall have music deeper than the music of the spheres. I shall out-sing the morning stars. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to the People of the Glad Heart, and today I shall be a good illustration.