I just don’t understand it, I can sit down to a healthy meal, salmon, fresh salads, fruits and vegetables; I can munch through that nutritious combo to the point of full, yet not be content. But give me one yummy peanut butter Reese’s cup, or a few Hershey kisses, or some delectable donuts, and I’m one happy camper. Yes, I undeniably suffer from sweet-tooth-syndrome, an insatiable appetite for sugary snacks, a craving for sweets, a fondness for donuts, pastries, and anything chocolate. But a combination of age and health issues have reduced my diet to the boring, good-for-you stuff, and any sweetness now relies on the addition of honey.
Honey is nature’s perfect food, a natural sweetener, a substance that strangely enough, is produced by insects to be eaten by humans. Honey is jam-packed with good things: vitamins (B, B6, C); minerals and nutrients (calcium, iron, zinc, potassium, magnesium, chromium); antioxidants, acids, sugars in the exact amount, and even water. Honey balances blood sugar, improves cholesterol numbers, promotes wound healing, and lowers blood pressure. I read that it takes approximately 550 foraging bees, visiting some two million flowers, to produce one pound of honey. The worker bee collects nectar from the flower, returns to the hive where a younger worker bee sucks the nectar out of the stomach of the forager, chewing on it for approximately thirty minutes, adding enzymes to break it down into a simple syrup. The worker then spits the nectar into a cell in the honeycomb. I guess the expression busy as a bee is justified?
It’s interesting to ponder for a moment why God’s Word is compared to honey. We understand that we are saved, sanctified, and cleansed “with the washing of water by the Word,” nourished as a newborn babe with the “sincere milk of the word,” and led to maturity and strength by the “strong meat” of the Word, those deep truths belonging to them “that are of full age.” Water, milk, meat…all life sustaining, essential. But ah, sweetness!
“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” That nourishing Word is enjoyable, infinitely desirable. When our lips are graced with His Words, we have the sweet realization that we are speaking eternal truths from the God of Creation. With joyful enthusiasm, we can pass those sweet words on to our children, and our grandchildren; we can witness a lost soul find the Savior, a straying lamb return home. Sweet to take in, sweet to give out. Do you find His Word “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb,” that natural sweetener that satisfies and sustains?
Psalm 19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, year, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Lord, thank You for the sweetness of Your Word, the Word that sustains and satisfies my soul.