daily java

Daily Java:

We have heard about proud Moab—
      about its pride and arrogance and rage.
      But all that boasting has disappeared.
The entire land of Moab weeps.
      Yes, everyone in Moab mourns
for the cakes of raisins from Kir-hareseth.
      They are all gone now.
The farms of Heshbon are abandoned;
      the vineyards at Sibmah are deserted.
The rulers of the nations have broken down Moab—
      that beautiful grapevine. (Isaiah 16:6-8)

In my daily Bible reading I am reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is delivering God’s condemnation to several countries round about Israel.

It can get rather depressing and I am always glad when I get through with this section. I don’t really care for it. For one thing, I have no emotional investment in all these countries and, quite frankly, do not care about them.

However, one thing struck me today. The passage above where the people missed their raisin cakes. What a strange thing to miss. Your whole country lies in ruins and people miss the raisin cakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how caught up in food memories we are.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of her chocolate gravy. She made chocolate gravy like I have never had before or since. It was a special Saturday morning breakfast served over biscuits and was great.

My wife said that when she thinks of me and things I make, she thinks of either steak or lasagna. With her I think of stroganoff. Our daughter will probably think of green enchiladas, what we call sour cream enchiladas. Ella’s mother, she said, was roast, rice and gravy., her favorite aunt soup, my mother roast and french fries.

We all have memory keys of things that are gone. The Moabites were of raisin cakes. In the good old days, they say around eating raisin cakes. Now that the vineyards are gone, they cannot and they miss them.

I don’t really know what a raisin cake is exactly – a bunch of raisins mashed together, or a cake made with a lot of raisins – but when they thought of home that was it. And it was gone irretrievably.

When things are gone, not only the bad, but also the good is gone. The good old days were really only a few memories you have stored up that exclude the bad memories. Life in Moab was not all sitting around snacking on raisin cakes. Every meal of my mother’s was not roast and the chocolate gravy was a sometime thing.

But it is funny that you associate those not-to-be-repeated foods with different people and places.

John Donne said, “you cannot go home.” You can’t go back and have those foods in those situations. It is impossible. But how large they loom in your mind and how much you miss the people who gave them to you.