I’ve always liked citrusy flavors. Growing up, Sprite was a huge treat on the rare occasion my family ate out. If we travelled to another city, one of my family’s few traditions was to try and find a Korean restaurant wherever we went. If we found one — back in what my kids would likely refer to as “the ancient era” — it felt like a real feat. There was no pocket internet back then. We’d go by the Yellow Pages and asking locals. It was a hunt that promised the most beautiful reward: Kalbi cooking over charcoal, kimchi and other banchan, silver bowls of steaming, hot rice, and a can of Sprite.

That lemon-lime flavor alongside the flavors of home and my upbringing were perfection to me.

But it wasn’t until I was in my forties, and halfway across the world in Battambang, Cambodia, that I experienced the full flavor of a lime for the first time.

Cambodia is nestled between Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, just north of the equator. It’s hot in Cambodia, and even though I was there in January, dry season, the highs were close to eighty degrees most days. Being close to the equator means many tropical things grow well there.

My first dinner in Battambang was at Green Mango Café, which is part of The Culinary Training Center for Global Impact: a program that teaches kitchen and restaurant management skills to at-risk girls. When my lime juice arrived, I took one sip and my eyes opened wide like Stanley Tucci hosting his Nat Geo food show in Italy. I realized I had never truly tasted the full flavor of a lime, or that one green lime could have as much flavor as it did.

I was reminded of C.S. Lewis and his writing on our desires in his book, The Weight of Glory: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Now, it should be noted that it wasn’t my fault that I hadn’t tasted the real potential and seemingly “infinite joy” of a lime prior to being in Cambodia. But it is something to think about the actual goodness of our desires and longings and how they can point to the fullness we were intended to find, experience, and enjoy in God’s creation.

That week, it wasn’t just the limes. In Cambodia, I experienced the generosity and beauty of God through the Cambodian people in a new way. While sitting with new friends and bearing witness to their stories, I saw the face and felt the heart of God in a way I hadn’t before. Cambodia, and all the beloved Cambodians who live there, tell a story about God that only they can tell. What if we are far too easily pleased, as Lewis suggests with experiences and tastes, but also with a small view of community, kinship, and one another?

In these days of polarization and dehumanization, it’s become too easy to reduce one another to a Sprite can. We minimize or overlook the true beauty, value, and flavor — the imago Dei in every person.

It’s become too easy to take the imitation of taste for the real thing. Whether it’s in how we stereotype one another, villainize each other, label or define or rank others, we’ve forgotten the fullness of love and the reality of God’s image and uniqueness placed in each of us – every country and culture across the world included.

I’m reminded of Jesus, and how He constantly offered His friends and followers a fuller view of humanity.

Sometimes He did this by reminding them to look inward and see what was really in their own hearts. Other times He did this by including and inviting more into His circles than those who were there would’ve wanted. Jesus did this by traveling into cities and places and people groups that most from His own ethnic group wouldn’t have gone near. He did this so much that the good news of His love has carried beyond His world into mine – through generations, culture, and geographic expanse that His friends and followers couldn’t have fathomed no matter how they tried.

Tasting limes and being with people in Cambodia was a love note from God. Not only did it remind me that I am fully loved, but that God loves Cambodia and the people of every nation with love, fullness, and a connectedness that is beyond my understanding.

It’s God’s love that sent Jesus into the world, from one culture to another, to embrace every single person He encountered. May that same love lead us to embrace and see the worth in one another above all other loves and loyalties. May it be His love that reminds us that everyone, everywhere, from every story, is made full of goodness, value, meaning, and love —  as full of flavor as a Cambodian lime.

Listen to Tasha’s devotion here or on your favorite podcast app!

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