The past couple of blog posts focused on the goodness of God – Taste and See and God is Good. So What? At the end of God is Good. So What? I indicated that we would consider Babette’s Feast and how it relates to experiencing God’s goodness. Babette’s Feast is a little-known short story written in the mid-20th century, later turned into a film in the 1980s. It’s a great little story, filled with metaphorical symbolism, and well worth the time to read or watch.
Babette’s Feast is an 18th-century story of two spinster sisters who lived in a small coastal village in Denmark. They had committed together to care for the small and dwindling parish that their late father had founded. Both had opportunities to leave the village, but at their father’s request, they stayed to help care for the community, even beyond his death.
One day, at the request of an acquaintance, the sisters agreed to take in Babette Hersant, a refugee of the French revolution, employing her as a cook. They taught Babette to cook the cod and bread the way they always prepared it – dry and bland. What they didn’t know was that Babette was a very good (tov meod) cook. Before escaping Paris, Babette had been the head chef at one of the most famous Parisian cafés.
Unbeknownst to Babette, in her absence, someone continued to pay her annual entrance in the Lottery – which she won! The sisters and community folks all assumed that Babette would use the winnings to return to France. She did not. Instead, she used all of her winnings to put on a dinner of gratitude in honor of the sisters’ father’s 100th birthday. She spent all of her winnings on an extravagant meal for a dozen people.
One of the guests at the dinner was a visiting general who had spent a fair amount of time dining at the finest cafés of Paris. Familiar with the pallets and fare of the locals, he was prepared for a typical bland meal. Babette’s feast was far from bland. Course after course, the general was astonished by the taste and quality – taste and quality he was familiar with. He appreciated and savored every morsel. He knew an outstanding meal when he was presented with one.
The townspeople, however, merely tolerated the unusual fare of Babette’s Feast.
God’s goodness surpasses all that we can imagine. Tasting and seeing, asking, seeking, and knocking opens our eyes to a goodness that exceeds our limited imaginations and expectations. If we are not consistently tasting and seeking the goodness of God, I wonder if there is the possibility that we won’t know it when it shows up. Something to ponder.
Addendum September 7, 2022. I just read this today from Luke 5 in The Voice*:
Look, nobody tears up a new garment to make a patch for an old garment. If he did, the new patch would shrink and rip the old, and the old garment would be worse off than before. And nobody takes freshly squeezed juice and puts it into old, stiff wineskins. If he did, the fresh wine would make the old skins burst open, and both the wine and the wineskins would be ruined. New demands new—new wine for new wineskins. Anyway, those who’ve never tasted the new wine won’t know what they’re missing; they’ll always say, “The old wine is good enough for me!” (Luke 5:36-39)
* Ecclesia Bible Society. The Voice Bible, eBook: Step Into the Story of Scripture (p. 1247). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
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