craving

An old man goes to a diner every day for lunch. 

He always orders the soup du jour. 

One day the manager asks him how he liked his meal. T

he old man replies, "Wass goot, but you could give a little more bread."

So the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him four slices of bread. "How was your meal, sir?" the manager asks. "Wass goot, but you could give a little more bread," comes the reply.

So the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him eight slices of bread. "How was your meal today, sir?" the manager asks. "Wass goot, but you could give a little more bread," comes the reply.

So ... the next day the manager tells the waitress to give him a whole loaf of bread with his soup. "How was your meal, sir?" the manager asks, when he comes to pay. "Wass goot, but you could give just a little more bread," comes the reply once again.

The manager is now obsessed with wanting to hear this customer say that he is satisfied with his meal, so he goes to the bakery, and orders a six-foot-long loaf of bread. When the man comes in as usual the next day, the waitress and the manager cut the loaf in half, butter the entire length of each half, and lay it out along the counter, right next to his bowl of soup. The old man sits down, and devours his bowl of soup and both halves of the six-foot-long loaf of bread.

The manager now thinks he will get the answer he is looking for, and when the old man comes up to pay for his meal, the manager asks in the usual way: "How was your meal TODAY, sir?"

The old man replies: "It wass goot as usual, but I see you are back to giving only two slices of bread!"

Now there's a man with an insatiable craving for bread! We consider that unnatural, but oh that we had that kind of craving for a relationship with God! Perhaps the reason many of us don't have the relationship with God that we think we ought to have is that we truly don't desire it enough. Listen to David:

"As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42:1-2a).