Being Spiritually Formed by COVID

This week marks the second anniversary of a severe and life-threatening fight I had with COVID. I wrote two articles reflecting on the experience and it’s implications for spiritual formation and leadership. Below you’ll find an excerpt from one of the articles. You can read the full article here.

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While my sense of smell is still AWOL, I’m grateful my sense of taste returned. Last week, my wife and I went out to lunch at a taco joint. I just about jumped up and down when I experienced for the first time again the wonderful explosion of taste at the first bite of fish tacos and queso blanco with my chips. My taste buds woke up! I wanted to yell to the table next to us. I’m eating in color and hi-def again!

In my loss of these senses, I realized that our physical senses are amazing gifts from God. We learn, of course, to appreciate things when they are taken away from us. I’ve never purposefully thanked God for my senses more than I have over the past month. Our senses are gifts; they are also wonderful tools and vehicles for our own spiritual formation. They are avenues in order for us to experience God and his world. I’m grateful there is a God who wants to be enjoyed by His creation in much the same way I enjoy sushi and Thai massaman curry.

But meant for more than merely experiencing God and his world, our senses are meant to help us to delight and savor.  When my sense of taste was absent, eating was a purely functional experience. As I’d sit down for another meal, scooping food into my mouth, it was entirely transactional. Sadly, I realized there have been times where this would adequately describe my own relationship with God.

God,

Please fill me.

Give me what I need to make it through today.

Amen.

Those times I’ve engaged with God in a transactional posture were purely functional. But the times in my life when I have felt the closeness of God and the vitality of relationship with him have felt like enjoying a wonderful meal—delighting, relishing, savoring. That simple yet profound line from Psalm 34:8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” has stuck with me. I want a rich experience, not an impersonal transaction.

God wants me to delight in him like I delight in fish tacos and queso blanco.

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in The Message also come to mind: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth” (Mt 5:13). Our role as followers of Jesus, as people belonging to the Way, is to help bring out the God-flavors of the world. God’s world is to be savored, enjoyed, delighted in. And that’s a crucial part of our mission: helping people to also experience—to savor and delight in—the goodness of God and His world. Our Christian existence is embedded in the commission to help people taste the flavors of God’s goodness and grace.