“Tea and cake, please.”

“THE MERE CHINK OF CUPS AND SAUCERS TUNES THE MIND TO HAPPY REPOSE.”    _{George Gissing}
                                                                                                                      

  I am English therefore I adore tea. Be it the PG Tips basic or the refined Twinings Breakfast variety, I could drink a teapot full!

  Watching the BBC Drama, Death in Paradise- the oh-so-very-British Detective Inspector Richard Poole dropped onto a 100 degrees Caribbean Island and in desperate need of a good old cup of finest- I am reminded of myself in India 4 years ago!

   After 3 weeks of drinking the local ‘cup of char’ using, at best, powdered milk and, at worst, no milk at all, I was craving tea of any reasonable sort!

   It was therefore with jubilation and celebration that my peers and I discovered a delightful continental tea shop in the city of Shimla! Shimla was used by the British Raj to administrate India during the winter months, due to its warm climate. It was built in a much more English manner than most of the other northern Indian cities, boasting- I kid you not-  a range of mock Tudor houses!

   The picture on the right shows me joyously holding the first packet of English Breakfast Tea I had tasted in weeks! I rather like the image- it symbolises the happiness and refreshment that I had been missing and yet earnestly seeking! As you can see, my fingers were cracked and dirty after 2 weeks of hiking in the Himalayas and a week of DIY at a local school! The tea was definitely needed!

    The Bible uses thirst and the quenching (quenchatition?!) of thirst as a vivid illustration of both our need for righteousness and also our need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But the Bible also talks about how God’s Word, the scriptures, should excel the greatest earthly delights and pleasures, aka English Breakfast Tea. 

    The Psalmists regularly described God’s Word as honey:

    “How sweet are your words to my taste,
        sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
   “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

   God himself describes his desire to bless the Israelites with abundant fruitfulness in terms of wild honey:

    “But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat,
        and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

   Honey, in the Bible, was something which was basically a luxurious food- something to be desired after. Personally I don’t like honey much. So I tend to substitute ‘tea’ of even ‘fudge cake’ instead of ‘honey’ in these passages. It helps me to appreciate the magnitude or personal nature of the Psalms. Essentially the Psalmist, if in my position, would be saying a prayer of praise, roughly along these lines, “How refreshing are your words to my taste, more refreshing than tea to my lips!” “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than a  sticky toffee pudding and dripping melted fudge.”
   I love the language of scripture, and certainly would not advocate adopting the paraphrases above! However it does give one pause for thought. The Psalmist was comparing God’s Word to a delicious delicacy. And honey’s consistency is not really much different to that of a sticky toffee pudding!
   The Lord’s desire is to feed us spiritually with the choicest portions, with the finest servings of the Kingdom’s kitchens.
  One of Solomon’s proverbs underpins this point well. Solomon wanted nothing but the best spiritual food from God:

   “Two things I ask of you;
        deny them not to me before I die:
    Remove far from me falsehood and lying…
     …feed me with the food that is needful for me…”

   Solomon appreciated the need to both turn from bad, unwholesome, food which would clog the arteries, dull the brain and lead to death; and to also turn to the food fresh from God’s table, food which sustains, invigorates and energises.
   Perhaps you have realised that I am not talking about physical food any more!
   The illustration of food is helpful. It shows us the main purpose of God’s Word: to sustain the Christian, to fill him with the energy needed for the day/week/year and, perhaps chiefly, to remind us of our utter dependence on the Lord God each and every minute of our existence.
   But this duty of spiritual dining should not be burdensome. Quite the reverse. We are not dining as servants (in the kitchens) but as sons and daughters of the King, in the Great Hall of God. As we delve into scriptures, we are not doing so alone, but in the presence of our Saviour and  High Priest, Jesus Christ; and with the Father, who graciously gives us every starter, side plate, sorbet and mint; and with the Holy Spirit who points us toward the Father and the Son.

•    Jesus said this,  “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me…” It is in the Bible that we learn about God- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• It is in those pages that we discover God’s purpose for our lives “For this is the will of God, your sanctification…”.
• It is in scripture that we have the tools of worship and praise, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”.
• In fact, we are told, the Bible is good for everything we can possibly need! “ …you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

   Certainly, when I sit down to read my Bible I don’t always get the same joy as I do when eating a sticky toffee pudding, or even drinking a cup of English Breakfast tea, for that matter. Perhaps, before opening up my Bible (and during, and after as well) I should be praying that the Lord would open my heart to his words. That scripture would invigorate and sustain me. That it would both teach and admonish me. And that, when I read His words, I will be delighted, and also filled with a joy that is vastly superior to that of drinking my first proper cup of tea in 3 weeks!
  If we are praying that we would savour every last morsel of the Bible, that we would praise and love the author, then the Lord certainly won’t refuse our prayers; indeed, we have this great promise to lay claim of:

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.”1 Peter chapter 3  verse 12