I Want to Taste Everything

Let a young woman be sought for the king . . . Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm. 1 Kings 1:2

While out to dinner recently, I provoked a family discussion on our individual personality types. There are many models, but one that fits me pretty well refers to a sensation seeking personality. This can be a good or bad thing: I enjoy life and I love new experiences, but I also have an appetite for things that should be left alone. I want to taste everything.

Most of us can identify with this to some extent. It is our nature to seek pleasure, but our flesh nature looks for it in places that can be destructive. It is not wrong to seek satisfaction. It is just that we often try to feed our appetites the wrong way.

King David was also a man of large appetites. In today’s passage, near death, he developed the chills. To my physician mind, this would suggest infection, but as antibiotics were unavailable, his attendants tried to meet his physical needs the way they always had. What would make the king feel better? I know! He needs a young woman.

Fortunately for the young woman, David did not need sex. He was dying. His aides can’t be faulted for trying though. They simply tried to provide for their king that which he had always wanted.

Like David, we often try to satiate our appetites the wrong way. We need to follow God but honestly, that sounds like a lot of work and sacrifice. We know where we can find a shortcut to happiness though. We can find it in a pill, food, a bottle, pornography, career, money, or in affirmation from others.

Like King David though, we find that the desires of our flesh often lead to emptiness and misery. Instant gratification always requires payment later. If though, we follow God above all, seeking our joy, purpose and meaning in Him, then we will find that we can truly enjoy this life, finding pleasure in it the right way. Our sensation seeking can be ultimately and perfectly filled, only in the one who made us.