A Taste of Something New

In the mid-1950’s our family lived in the small town of Los Gatos, California. Los Gatos was a suburb of San Jose that would eventually become known as the Silicon Valley. One of the things our family liked to do was go to drive-in movies. Mom and dad would make a bed in the back seat of the family Oldsmobile and dress my brother and I in our pajamas. We would fall asleep shortly after the movie began giving my mom and dad some alone time in the front seat.

I remember one occasion in 1957 when we went to a drive-in movie. One part of that night printed itself upon my memory. Just before the movie started, my dad went to the snack bar and returned with a pizza. This was the first pizza our family had ever seen or tasted. It was all of 6 inches across and was topped with tomato sauce and cheese. Mom cut the little pizza into four pieces and we all had a taste – a first taste. To this day, I can still remember that experience. It was wonderful and unusual to my developing palate. In the coming months a pizza parlor opened in our small town. The name of the place was Magoo’s Pizza. We went to Magoo’s whenever we wanted to experience again the taste of pizza our family first discovered at the drive-in.

As I recalled that night in 1957 and tasting pizza for the first time, the Lord interrupted my recollection and said, “I am bringing a fresh taste of my Spirit to the Church.” When I heard the Lord speak, I realized this new taste would be the first indicator that we would be entering a new season in God’s Kingdom. We need a fresh taste of something new because some of what we are doing now has numbed our spiritual palate with its predictability and routine. Some of us have become so accustomed to the current flavor of our religious activity that we have stopped believing for something more.

A fresh taste of God’s presence is coming. Like my earthly father who brought pizza back to our family car, the Lord is about to do the same with His Church. When we taste this new work of the Spirit it will cause us to reorder our lives to make sure we are with like-minded people who want to taste that freshness again and again. In that spiritual reordering of our lives we will know we have been changed when we find ourselves wanting to repeat that first taste of goodness, just like our family did when we discovered Magoo’s Pizza had opened up for business in my hometown.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8