Title:- Of Teats and Truffles
Proverbs 5:18,19 Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love.
World-renowned chef, author, instructor and the host of popular cooking programmes on public television, ‘Jacques Pépin’ has served as dean of special programmes at the French Culinary Institute and as an adjunct faculty member at Boston University! After receiving his formal training at the Grand Hotel de l'Europe, and various Paris restaurants, he served as personal chef to French heads of state, Felix Gaillard, Pierre Pfimlin, and Charles de Gaulle. Author of the acclaimed 'La Technique' and 'La Methode', two books that present the principles of culinary technique and artistry; he earned a place in the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame. Amongst many other things he is a restaurant consultant and a contributing editor for 'Food & Wine Magazine' and a founder of the American Institute of Wine and Food. Bearing all this in mind, I tend to believe what he tells me about the art of cuisine!
Recently on a cooking programme, whilst I was observing his skills, he commented on the hunting of truffles in Italy and happened to mention that: “it was not necessary to have
the correct breed of dog to do this; indeed even a mongrel could be trained to do it. The key to success was to ensure that truffle oil was poured over the mothers teats when the dog was whelping.” It was as simple as that! The nutrition, warmth, satisfaction and comfort they felt as a whelping pup on the teats of their mother, would always be associated with the smell of truffles. This association then, would be forever imprinted upon their mind. Of course this outlines a well known cycle of: ‘attraction or recognition, leading to desire, leading to satisfaction, leading to attraction or recognition, leading to desire leading to satisfaction, leading to’….well you get the picture.Today’s text is a wonderful and pronounced blessing, that this cycle of desire and fulfillment should be forever unbroken with the wife of your youth. It quite unashamedly says FIVE important things.
First, that what God created was good. Very good!
Second, that He intends that we rejoice in these good things. Both of them, if you will!
Thirdly, that we might be mutually satisfied and
Fourthly, that this satisfaction would take place in enraptured delight, and
Fifthly and finally, that that this delight of enraptured satisfaction, would occur in the wide and wild fields of unshakeable faithfulness.
What a glorious cycle!
It follows then, that the wrong replacement of any one of these five things, like for example, replacing the acknowledgement of goodness with shame or guilt; or replacing accepting joy with unhappiness of our possession, or replacing desire with dissatisfaction; or allowing the crude and rude lustful commonality of 'any', to replace the caring, committed and covenant exclusiveness of 'the one', well this kind of unholy replacement breaks the cycle of attraction, desire and fulfillment and once this happens, well let me put it this way, it will be hard to go truffle hunting again!The spiritual application is clear: to consistently seek, pursue and find that which is good, we must get a taste of it, a smell of it, a pleasing satisfying sense of it and that, right from the start. For now though friend, if the cycle is broken; if you couldn’t find a truffle to save your life, then you must go back to the beginning, back to the start, back to the source, back to the breasts of God that fed you first! Lay aside all the unpleasing, unsatisfying, disruptive and impure aromas of sin and get on your face before God and in confession, repentance and in olfactory brokenness; open the Word, and smell once more, and suck once more, taste once more. Remember? Excellent! Now, seek what is good!
Listen:- Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. 1 Peter 2:1-3
Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger; But those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing. Psalm 34:8-10
Pray: - As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42:1-2
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