My wife is a great cook.  As part of her great-cook-ness, she has very sensitive taste buds.  She can detect tastes that I can’t even imagine.  This sometimes has amusing, unintended consequences.

We went out last night for a nice anniversary dinner in the Hocking Hills of Ohio.  Our meals were excellent!

However, my sweetheart was not entirely pleased with her salad.  It was a bit bitter.  Even I could tell that.

So, my excellent wife/cook said, “I think it would be better if they had used candied walnuts.  That would have made it sweeter.”  Then she added, “Also, they could have used sweeter apples.”  She thought for a few seconds more and continued, “They should have left the blue cheese crumbles off. . . .  Oh!  And they should have added croutons.”

“It sounds to me,” I ventured (rather timidly), “That you have just made a different salad.”

We laughed.  The same qualities that make my wife a wonderful cook also make her a . . .  What is the word I’m struggling for here?  “Picky?”  No, that’s not it.  “Hard to please?”  Nope!  “Particular?”  No, that’s not exactly it either.  “Discerning!”  That is the word!  The same qualities that make my wife a wonderful cook also make her a discerning diner.

People who are really good at anything need to be discerning.  Whether they are surgeons, concert cellists, farmers, or plumbers, the difference between those who are okay and those who are excellent often boils down to being discerning.

And then, there is life itself.  We all need discernment there, don’t we?  And yet, that is precisely where it is difficult to practice discernment.

There is a wonderful verse from the book of Hebrews that speaks of the importance of being discerning.  The author of the letter is encouraging the believers to whom he is writing to grow up, and he gives them a helpful way of achieving spiritual maturity.

“Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” (Hebrews 5:14, New Living Translation)  Matthew Henry makes some helpful comments on this verse.

“There are spiritual senses as well as those that are natural. There is a spiritual eye, a spiritual appetite, a spiritual taste; the soul has its sensations as well as the body; these are much depraved and lost by sin, but they are recovered by grace. (6.) It is by use and exercise that these senses are improved, made more quick and strong to taste the sweetness of what is good and true, and the bitterness of what is false and evil. Not only reason and faith, but spiritual sense, will teach men to distinguish between what is pleasing and what is provoking to God, between what is helpful and what is hurtful to our own souls.”

In the context of my wife’s ideas for improving the taste of her salad, I was especially struck by Matthew Henry’s words “It is by use and exercise that these senses are improved . . . .”

My wife was not a great cook when her mother gave birth to her.  She did not come forth from the womb with a spatula in her hand—a fact for which, I’m sure, her mom was profoundly grateful.  She practiced, and she learned.

It is the same with life.  We practice and we learn.  There are shortcuts in life, but there are no shortcuts to life.

There is an old joke that I’m sure you’ve heard, but that bears repeating here.  A tourist was trying to find his way around New York City.  He asked a man on the street how to get to Carnegie Hall.

“Practice!  Practice!  Practice!” the man on the street replied.

Same for cooking food and for cooking up a life well lived.