A few weeks ago I went to this cute café called Twisty Tails with some friends. At this place you can order food and play with doggies! Pretty cool right?! (especially when most of the dogs in India have rabies and other diseases so you can’t pet them!)
As I dove into the chicken tikka pizza that my best friend and I split, I realized something I had never paid any attention to before…
In this culture, it is the most normal thing to put ketchup on your pizza. In fact, I even
started doing this. But on this particular occasion, I realized that the reason the pizza needs more tomato sauce is because there is none on it.
If you order pizza in the Western World, you will look forward to seeing the bright red pizza sauce peeking between the cheese and other layers of toppings. There’s no question about whether there will be pizza sauce (tomato-based sauce) on the pizza. I guess our problem in the Western World is that we drown our deliciousness in Ranch dressing…
Anyways, as we continued to dip our pizza in the ketchup, I also was taken aback by how many other extra things we had to add to it.. chili flakes, oregano, more ketchup… It’s almost as if the pizza was not “up to par” and we have to keep adding things to it so that it meets our standards.
My heart goes out to the poor chef that made this pizza… I hope he isn’t offended that we all thought it needed a little more just to satisfy our hunger.
It just made me think of how the Word of God is our spiritual food.
The apostle John records Jesus sharing this basic fact to the crowd of people that witness Him walking on water in chapter 6. Jesus says:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6.35)
Because Jesus was the Word that became flesh, we can make the inference that the Word is our spiritual food (John 1.14)
Unlike the pizza I ate, the Word does not need anything added to it to make it more satisfying. The Word and the Word alone is enough to quench our spiritual hunger and thirst, no ketchup necessary!
It’s like Jesus is this Master Chef that cooked up this unfathomable recipe. Not a single person can do better than it. Nothing is needed to improve it… no salt, no pepper, no sugar, no ranch. There is no water other than the Living Water. The water of eternal life:
“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'” (John 4.13-14)
It’s actual pretty stress relieving. To know that there is and always will be this food that I can rely on to satisfy me is just unthinkable. It’s not like wondering if you want Chinese or Mexican, a milkshake or a soft drink. It’s do I want some Old Testament or New Testament? or am I in the mood for some major prophets, Gospels, or letters of Paul?
I am so happy that I do not have to worry about adding spices to make this more satisfying and hunger quenching because, man, I really don’t know my spices!
Jesus says: “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.“ (John 6.53-57)
Tonight I went to another cafe and I had another reminder of this when I ordered my cappuccino. I took one sip and it was bitter as all get out. Luckily, the nice served had brought me a little boat of sugar.
In order for me to drink my cappuccino and enjoy it, I had to add something to it. How glorious to know that we do not need to add a spoonful of anything to God’s Word.
In His Grip 