Milk of the Word
I have two lovely daughters. I try to cherish every stage of their lives. Sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes it is pleasurable. And then there are times that serve as epiphanies and I end up thanking God almighty for using them to teach me something.My firstborn did this and my second has recently started to as well. As I feed her from the bottle, she will reach up and try to wrap her hands around it too. It's as if she wants to make sure that she gets every last drop. Like she is afraid I am going to wretch the elixir from her toothless mouth and leave her to starve.
Sometimes as she places her best death-grip on the bottle she cracks open her eyes to give me a sideways glance. "Don't even try it," she threatens, "I don't want to burp, I want to eat." Both of my daughters have done it and I suspect it is a normal stage of development.
Desire the Word
Scripture urges believers to have this desire for God's word. If God's word is like milk, then the believer is like an infant. We have so much to learn and so many milestones to hurdle, we need nourishment. We crave it. We want it. We want to put away everything that potentially removes the Word of God from our lips. (I would say going in both directions, but that takes the metaphor further than intended, I believe. Maybe that's just from my personal experiences with acid reflux.)That's not the part that brought a tear to my eye. This is:
She's not strong enough to actually hold her own bottle yet. I could easily draw it out of her lips. If I did not support the vessel, she would not receive a single drop of nourishment. She is willing, but very weak.
An infant — a newborn babe — doesn't do much other than scream and cry and be as annoying as possible. In this analogy, that is the believer. Peter is illustrating our dependency on God. Yes, we desire. But so does God and he gives us nourishment like a father who mixes formula for his child and settles into an armchair for a feeding at 4 am. God is like the mother who tenderly and willingly nurses her daughter though she is weary from all the events of the day.
Peter goes on to call Christ the living cornerstone. He is our support. We crave him. We want more of him. He will not disappoint us. He is willing to teach all who come to him with a willingness to learn. Without his support, we are lost & doomed to remain hungry.