By Pastor Neil Harris, Worth Valley Community Church

COOKERY programmes have never been so successful.

In some we watch a famous chef prepare delicious meals step by step in the hope that we can copy them and produce the same in order to impress our friends and loved ones.

Then there are those where we are watching everyday people try and impress judges with their less than professional but equally delicious offerings. Sometimes they dazzle the judges with their creations and at other times we feel their sorrow as the cake droops or the pastry burns.

Perhaps the reason our nation is so keen on cookery programmes however is that ultimately taste is everything. For many of us, we don’t just want to see the food, but we want to know what it tastes like. We want to truly savour the flavours.

I wonder if you have ever made something that looked amazing but then on tasting you realised you missed a key ingredient, or perhaps you were served a plain looking dish and then one mouthful and it tasted like something produced by the world’s finest chef?

In life people will say they feel something is missing, like a key ingredient. Maybe they just feel that there must be more to life than the everyday normality of life.

Faith can be said to fulfil that search for answers, to bring meaning to life. In fact, in a metaphorical sense, people sometimes speak of tasting the good life, or having a taste of things to come. They don’t mean a physical taste but they mean an experience and in we see this metaphor used in the Bible.

Psalm 34 verse 8 (NIV) teaches: “Taste and see that the Lord is good”.

The lesson is that faith in God can be talked about or we observe those who are Christians and how they practice that, or visit a local church and enjoy the music or words being spoken but all this is being a spectator or an onlooker.

The practice of the Christian faith is a personal experience as well as a collective activity. The Christian believes God can be known in a credible and personal way and they have tasted and found He is good. They talk of how they walk through life with them, they taste and experience Him through times of worship, prayer and Bible study.

So, the next time you watch the latest episode, consider tasting and experiencing faith!