Read: 1 Peter 2: 1-3

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation—
3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Reflect:

To crave means to feel a powerful desire for something.  I’ve spoken with a number of people who literally crave what brings them disappointment, separation from those who love them, and keep them from experiencing God.  At times, I’ve been there myself.

To fight these cravings for darkness, it seems to me that often we invest our energies into strategies to “just say no.”  We make every attempt to stay clean and pure and still we often fail and live a life that is full of regret.  How do we “put away” the yearning we have for the sin that only threatens to destroy us?

Consider how Peter uses the analogy of a newborn’s desire for milk.  In this simple word picture, he is encouraging us to crave what we need in order to grow strong in our faith. The only way to replace the yearning we have for the sin that harms us to to crave “pure spiritual milk.”

Respond:

Psalm 34:8 encourages us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  But how can we see that the Lord is good when we refuse to come to the table?  What if we turned off the media that invades our hearts and tuned into a time of prayer and study of God’s word?  What if we shifted our focus to craving the Prescience of God in our lives?

On this day in 2001, three thousand people began the day as any other.  It is likely that most of them were filling their lives with what they craved.  Maybe it was success, or a promotion or even something more noble, but within hours only one thing would matter.  What or who do I crave?  Really?