God satisfies our desires with good things. Isn't that good news? What is the one thing you most want? Our lives are filled with desires, some almost insatiable. Blackberry cobbler comes to mind for me. I ate it for breakfast at the Cobbler Café, a Houston Livestock Show kiosk. With thanks, I received and shared the gift of cobbler with Melanie. I love fruit and God has provided it for us to enjoy. It would not be good for me, however, to eat dessert several times a day, every day.
As David continues the list of benefits which God provides, he explains that God wants to satisfy our good desires with good things. Even in this provision of good things, God renews us. David remembers the Eagle which loses its feathers and replaces them with new ones. Just so, God takes away the old and gives us the new. We used to say to our kids, "Sleep is a gift. Receive it." When we eat well, or sleep well, or exercise we receive life as a gift from God.
Perhaps the best of our renewal lies ahead of us with God. Remember C. S. Lewis wrote, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably, earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing." In other words, God's best gifts here are not ends in themselves, but pointers to a pleasure and joy which far exceeds our desires here.
