Fresh out of Seminary, I was seeking a ministry position.  There was a church in Longview, TX looking for a youth pastor.  It seemed promising.

The leadership wanted to take a magnifying glass to my life, so we gathered at a steakhouse for the meeting.  I grabbed a tray and left my order with the cashier.  She gave me a Texas sized glass – 32 ounces of iced tea.  From there I headed to the salad bar to load up on the greens.    

But when I reached for the lettuce, I bumped and dumped my glass of tea.  The entire 32 ounces poured into a serving bowl of potato salad.   I slyly removed the glass from the bowl and made sure no one saw what happened.

Then I slipped away intending to report the salad bar slip-up to the manager.  “Uh sir, there seems to be a strange salad at your bar!” 

When I returned to the scene of the crime, I watched in horror as the senior pastor’s wife was filling her plate with a big ladle of strangely colored, watery potato salad.  I wanted to laugh – and cry!  

Did I warn her?  You know, I can’t remember.  I must have blacked out. 

________

I prefer pure potato salad.  In fact, most of us prefer pure.  We want our water to be uncontaminated and our honey to be unadulterated.  We want our air to be particulate free and we don’t want stir fry with E. coli.

However, we aren’t so particular when it comes to truth.  Sometimes we are OK with a half-truth   – just enough truth to make me feel like I am OK with God, with just enough non-truth to free me to do what I want. 

Some run from the truth, others reject it all together, but most are quite comfortable with tainted truth. 

The Apostle Peter had a directive for us.  He wrote, “Yearn like newborn infants for pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up to salvation.” – 1 Peter 2:2 NETBible.com

He wants us to emulate a newborn who frantically roots around at his mother’s breast for a meal.  Peter compared that milk to the pure milk of the Word of God.   

Recently a baby formula manufacturer was shut down by the FDA because their formula was tainted with bacteria.  There hasn’t been a recall on a nursing mother yet.  The milk is dispensed 100% pure.  Likewise, Scripture is an untainted source of spiritual truth. 

An infant doesn’t question the reliability of his mother’s milk.  He/she is eager to partake.  Nor do we need to question the integrity and reliability of Scripture.  It was originally delivered to us without error and has been maintained in that condition ever since.   

Did you know that an infant grows about 6 inches and gains about 16 lbs. during their first six months?  And yet all they take in is their mother’s milk.  The milk has everything that a child needs to flourish and grow. 

So it is with the word of God.  It is more than sufficient to grow us up into our salvation so that we think and act like the person God saved us to be. 

Peter tells us to cultivate an appetite for the pure Word of God.  When I snack on junk food in the afternoon, I have no appetite for the nutritious dinner that my wife has prepared.   

I am guessing the same applies to spiritual longings.  If we satiate ourselves with other stuff, it will stunt our appetite for the truth. 

Hey – I would encourage you to grab your Bible and drink from it as often as you can.  You can trust it implicitly – but beware of tea-stained potato salad.

A PRAYER: Lord may we think of that eager infant when we pick up our Bibles.

This has been Jim Johnson and pickleheavenpress.com

May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.