“Desire God’s pure word as newborn babies desire milk. Then you will grow in your salvation.” (1Pet. 2:2.)
Taking milk from the mother’s breast is an instinctive reflex important for nutritional and emotional bonding and development for every newborn child. Three days following my son’s birth, our paediatrician on a courtesy to my wife in hospital noticed something was awry and whisked him into intensive care. It turned out that my baby son was unable to receive the colostrum and was becoming dehydrated. None of the hospital medical staff had noticed. If left unattended for a day or two longer, he would have sustained brain damage or worse.
In his letter to the newly born-again believers Peter used imagery similar to the sages who frequently referred to proselytes as ‘newborn babies.’ But when we dig a little deeper we see that Peter was saying something substantially more. A closer look at the text reveals how Peter was linking a newborn child’s total dependency upon his mother’s milk to every believer as a picture how we should constantly be thirsting after Him to build strength and character in our relationship. Drinking the pure milk of God’s Word is something vital for all believers at every stage of life.
And by the way, let’s ensure that our ‘milk’ is not spiritually ‘homogenised’ or ‘pasteurised’ (i.e., tampered with or ‘sanitised’) otherwise we may lose many of the essential spiritual nutrients and health benefits needed!
