Curious Christian

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how deeply personal faith really is. How much of it can only be truly understood through direct experience? No matter how much we read or listen to others talk about the divine, something remains elusive until we encounter it for ourselves.

Basil the Great once wrote, in his Conversations on the Psalms: “As it is impossible to verbally describe the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted honey, so the goodness of God cannot be clearly communicated by way of teaching if we ourselves are not able to penetrate into the goodness of the Lord by our own experience.”

It’s such a striking image. We can explain the concept of honey all day, but the sweetness can only be known by tasting it. Isn’t it the same with God’s goodness? We can hear sermons, read books, and talk about spiritual truths, but until we personally experience that goodness, it remains just words. This is something I’m learning more and more as I reflect on my own journey.

There are moments, however fleeting, where I feel that goodness—whether it’s in a quiet moment of prayer, in the beauty of nature, or in an unexpected gesture of kindness. Those moments are like tasting honey for the first time. They open up something inside that no amount of intellectual understanding ever could. It makes me wonder: how can I create more space for that direct experience? How can I move to tasting more of God’s goodness in my everyday life?

It’s something I’m still pondering.