Welcome to Cave Beulah
This is an address given by Dave at the dedication of a cheese cave.
When God first created Man and Woman, He set them in a Garden and taught them how to be like Him – to take stuff from the land and make wonderful, beautiful, useful, and tasty things. They were to take the gold and minerals from the surrounding rivers, they were to learn how to domesticate the animals, they were to learn to till the ground and make things grow.
I wonder if God actually taught Adam and Eve how to crush grapes and make wine, or to grind wheat and make bread – and I wonder if God kept them busy out in the fields for a while so that the milk from their cows and goats started to sour so that He could show them how to make another miracle – cheese.
Adam and Eve, you know the story, rebelled against God and because of this were removed from that wonderful Garden. But from the very day of their exile God promised them that the world would be saved by the Seed of the Woman and that the broken relationship with God, complete with all of the fullness of enjoying the world He had given them, would be returned, restored – resurrected and brought back to life. This is what the Word Beulah means – it refers to the restored relationship of God with His people, and the enjoyment of the fruit of all that God promised to those who would walk with Him in faith – faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus. Welcome to Cave Beulah.
A Cave is of course, a place of burial – and for the Christian, it is the place where Jesus, having given His life for the sins of the world, was laid. But a cave is of course also a place of resurrection-hope. Out of the cave where Jesus was buried He would come forth on the third day in the power of His resurrected body. Everything the Estrellas do here they intend to do to the glory of God and in the name of Jesus, the One who came out of the cave and gave eternal life to all who would believe upon His name.
Cooking is a religion. Making cheese is part of the life of a faithful believer in Jesus, the Master Chef – after all, it was Jesus who was able to feed the full a crowd of over 5000 men from just a couple fish and a few small loaves. And making cheese from dead milk – this is part of the restoration, part of taking dominion over the world, part of the calling, the vocation, of man and woman in the Garden and in sweet communion with their God.
There is a man, Robert Capon, an Episcopal priest and an author of books on cooking, who wrote, “To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste!” (Supper of the Lamb).
And so, welcome to Cave Beulah, a place where rich things, fruitful things, and blessed things will come forth. Welcome to the Estrellas farm and to their family – a place filled with faith in a God who redeems, who gives a new life and a fresh start. Welcome to a place where Jesus and the Life He alone offers – is something you can taste. God Himself wrote – “taste and see that the Lord is good.” May all of your labors, Anthony and Kelli, be used of the Lord to teach many what it really means to taste. Amen.
God describes His redeemed world this way: “And in this mountain, the LORD of hosts will make for all people a feast of choice pieces, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of well-refined wines on the lees.” Certainly those choice pieces, those fat things to be enjoyed with well-matured wines included the cheeses that the Estrellas have created and will create here.
“O LORD, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Make this land and the fruit from this Cave a place of great bounty and blessing to many and strengthen the hands and souls that will work this land.
Above all, give us grace to live as true men, to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of bread and wine – and cheese. In Jesus’ name, Amen.