Sharing Time: To Taste God's Goodness
- Published on Saturday, 21 January 2012 04:34
- Category: Features
Reva Lachica Moore
I have never paid attention to the importance of one of God's wonderful gifts to us - our taste buds until I saw a baby acquiring new taste for baby food, and a 60-year-old hoping to get back the sense of taste that he had just lost.
Both the baby's and the adult's reactions are the same. The baby rapidly closes her eyes, puckers her lips, twists her face into a frown and shakes her head. The adult does the same exact thing, although more pronounced.
Studies show that children acquire taste for healthy foods by tasting a certain food 10 times before they acquire taste buds for that type of food. This is true, especially for vegetables. No wonder why my sons who hated vegetables when they were young, started to like them when they became adults. My persistence to introduce them to nutritional food paid off.
Today, as I try to take care of a grandbaby who is a picky eater, I must have patience to introduce her to food that will keep her healthy, and make sure to always cut out the junk.
Without taste buds, life would have less flavor, especially since most people love to eat. Someone with a taste bud dysfunction had described food lately as "tasting like poison." It is very difficult for a person who had lost his sense of taste to swallow food, resulting to: not eating properly thus health suffers. Without a sense of taste, no food is eaten resulting to: illness and possibly death.
Taste buds are sensory organs that are found on your tongue and allow you to experience tastes that are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Papillae (bumps on your tongue) contain taste buds, which contain very sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli. These tiny hairs send messages to the brain according to how something tastes, either sweet, salty, sour or bitter.
The average person has about 10,000 taste buds, which are replaced every two weeks or so. But as a person ages, some of the taste buds don't get replaced.
Taste bud dysfunction is caused by illnesses and other factors such as: prescription medication, toxic chemicals like benzene and formaldehyde, radiation therapy, oral infections, smell disorders, serious disorders such as a tumor, endocrine disorder, nutritional deficiency, inflammatory conditions, infections, or diseases such as gastroesophageal reflux disease.
There are ways to get taste buds back to functioning mode, if the condition has not become irreversible. Often, the taste buds start functioning again after the illness or causative factors are gone.
In a Christian's life, only through a constant, heartfelt desire will one be able to taste the goodness of God. A "baby" Christian has the same opportunities as a seasoned follower of Christ to know our Savior. There is nothing that we can do to deserve the good things that God bestows upon us, for God's goodness is not just reserved for the righteous. Matthew 5:45 tells us that God causes the rain to fall upon both the righteous and the wicked.
Many people worship God because of what they understand as an advantage of what God can do for them. They think that going to church is enough. Many Christians think that God owes them for worshipping Him. God’s goodness is not conditional on our worship or other good things that we try to do.
Like illnesses and situations that could cause the loss of sense of taste, a Christian could likewise lose his connection to Jesus Christ through spiritual illnesses and stupor. Only through constant communion and willingness to do His will are we able to taste God's goodness.
Psalms 34:8 says "Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him."