Heather & Vanilla Tea

The Loch Ness Tea Company, which has a rather negligible online presence, has produced a delightfully packaged tea, the sales patter of which reads:

This enchanting creation will transport you to the misty hills of Scotland, where the melodies of ‘Will ye go, lassie go?’ echo through the glens.

Very romantic. One certainly does not wish to be transported to the vast council estates of Glasgow or the snooty districts of liberal Edinburgh. 

The tea itself is rather pleasant; I can detect the vanilla which works well, though the heather I cannot. Is this because it is used in such tiny quantities? Or, more likely, I have never eaten heather before and do not know what it tastes like. I do not tend to eat a plate of vanilla pods, either, but I have had the seeds in ice-cream, and the flavour is distinctive to say the least. It is a nice drink, and I toast the one who bought it for me, though I will insist on adding cow’s milk.

Notwithstanding my ignorance of the taste of heather and therefore my inability to confirm its presence in the tea and the niceness thereof, I wondered about the text in Hebrews 6:4:

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

Both the Arminian and the Calvinist is likely to puzzle over this text, wondering whether it can be used to support his position or whether it is one of those awkward ones against which he must argue and explain away. ‘Tasted’ is sometimes used to imply that certain persons never fully drank or comprehended the gospel, nor imbibed Christ, instead merely sampling and sniffing the flavours. Did they fully appreciate the richness of the tonic, or just get a sense of a flavour they could not quite identify? Time shall tell, though I suspect that people who reject Christ tasted a flavour which they never fully recognised. Fake believers enjoy the smell and understand that the taste on their tongue's tip is better than anything they find elsewhere - but they take Him no further. 

I still do not know if I have tasted Scottish heather in that pleasant drink, and I know I have not fully quaffed of the riches of Christ. But what I know of Him, I love, and I thirst for more.

And that is why I know that I am a real Christian.

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. -John 4:14