The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it. [Isaiah 55:10-11 (NLT)]
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! [Anonymous]
Back in January, many people made resolutions to read the Bible. If you pledged to read the entire Bible this year, good for you. Like many who make that resolution, however, you may already have fallen behind schedule and are tempted to quit. Having tried to do it in a year, I feel your pain. After finally getting through Leviticus, Jeremiah nearly did me in with his doom and gloom. It’s not just the reading that takes time; it’s the understanding, the digesting, of what we’ve read that can slow us down. After all, there’s no point of reading it if we don’t understand it! I could read the words in a college astrophysics text but, if I didn’t understand them, I’d know no more about astrophysics on the last page than I did on the first. This year, I’m reading the Bible in chronological order and, in spite of my goal to do it in a year, it will probably take longer. For those who are discouraged or soon will be, I thought I’d rerun a previous devotion for you.
When in Africa, four hunters each bagged an enormous elephant. The elephants weighed 14,000 pounds apiece and, after butchering and processing, the men ended up with 7,000 pounds of edible meat in each of their freezers. Resolving to eat their elephants in one year’s time, they had to consume about nineteen pounds of meat a day. Within a day or two, George, realizing there was no way he could eat all that meat every day, quit. Tom made good headway until he got to the elephant’s trunk. It had a gamey taste and, with its 100,000 muscles, was tough to chew; discouraged, he also quit. Abe tried hard but he was a slow eater and only averaged five pounds a day. Knowing he’d never meet the deadline at that rate, Abe also quit. Ted, however, understood that some is better than none so he ate a little bit every day. If he was hungry, he ate more and if he wasn’t, he ate less and just picked up where he’d left off the previous day. When he encountered the chewy trunk, he moved over to the tender tasty ear for a while before returning to the tough part. One look at the calendar told him he’d never be done in a year but he didn’t let that bother him. He just kept eating the elephant, one bite at a time, until it was all gone.
That one bite at a time philosophy goes for reading the Bible as well as for eating elephants! While it’s nice to have a goal, sometimes that goal isn’t feasible. Not achieving your day’s objective, however, isn’t a reason to quit. As Ted learned, some is better than none if you want to accomplish anything. Like the elephant’s trunk, some parts of the Bible are really tough and hard to digest. When Ted got to the trunk, he took a break and moved to something easier to chew before returning to the tough part; we can do the same with our reading. Ruth, Esther and James are far easier to digest than Chronicles, Lamentations or Isaiah and we can move around in our reading when things get tough. Some people read slower and some parts of the Bible take a whole lot longer to digest than others. While setting a target date is admirable, it may be unrealistic; struggling to maintain an unrealistic pace can turn what should be uplifting into drudgery. Ted changed his objective from consuming his elephant in 365 days to polishing it off eventually and he achieved his goal. The same philosophy works for our Bible reading. If we read a little a day, taking it one page at a time, sooner or later, we will come to the end.
I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. I praise you, O Lord; teach me your decrees. … Be good to your servant, that I may live and obey your word. Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. [Psalm 119:11-12,17-18 (NLT)]
P.S. No elephants were harmed during the writing of this devotion!
For thousands of years, during their weekday morning prayers, observant Jews have worn tefillin. Sometimes called phylacteries, they are small black leather boxes attached to leather straps. Inside the boxes are four sections of the Torah from Exodus and Deuteronomy. The verses pronounce the unity of one God in what’s called the Shema, the promise of blessings for obedience and warning of retribution for disobedience, the obligation to remember the Jews’ bondage in Egypt, and the responsibility to transmit their faith to their children. One box is strapped on the left arm so to be near the heart and the other is strapped on the forehead. The placement symbolizes that God’s word is to be impressed upon both the heart and soul.
A young pastor friend admits to not being good at reciting Bible verses from memory. A product of the computer/Internet age, he just taps in a key word or topic and, almost instantly, the verses are right in front of him in whatever translation he wants. There’s no need to memorize verses when, with just a few keystrokes, the words appear. I may read the Bible every day and predate the age of computers but I’m no better at knowing verses by heart than he. If I remember my passwords for both computer and Internet, I can find whatever verses I need. While that works when I’m researching or writing, my desk is not where most witnessing opportunities occur. I could plead age as an excuse but I didn’t memorize Bible verses even when my brain was younger and possessed far less useless trivia than it does now. My pastor friend and I both profess to love God’s word and yet we don’t seem to love it enough to learn it by heart.
Having heard that I write Christian devotions, the man looked across the dinner table and asked, “Have you always been religious?” The unexpected question from a Jewish man I barely knew caught me off guard. While I knew he wasn’t asking for a long salvation story, I needed to answer his simple question. I faltered through a brief explanation that I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t consider myself a Christian but that my faith grew deeper as it carried me through some really rough spots in life. Having no idea where I’d go from there, I heaved a sigh of relief when the table’s conversation moved to another topic.
“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” asks the comedian. “Practice, practice, practice,” is his answer. “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work,” said Booker T. Washington, a man who truly knew the value of hard work. Most of us, having been raised with a strong work ethic, would agree with Washington’s words. If we want something we must work for it. If we want to be musicians, we practice; if we want to get on the team, we train; if we want a scholarship, we study. Success comes through determination and lots of hard work. We’ve heard all the maxims; there’s no elevator to success so we have to take the stairs. We know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, we must work our way up the ladder, and we’ve got to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Success is never handed to you and it’s only in the dictionary that success comes before work.
In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther instructs people to say the following prayer as soon they get out of bed: “God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit watch over me. Amen.” When I watch my grands, it’s not just keeping the baby dry and fed, getting the toddler to use the potty and take his nap, getting the kids to school, preparing their lunch, or making sure that homework gets done. Watching over them is more than just supervising them and keeping them from destroying the house. It means protecting them—from dangerous objects, people, and activities. It’s keeping them from getting hurt or hurting anyone else. Sometimes it means stopping them in their tracks and other times it’s removing something from their reach. Watching them is wiping their tears, laughing at their jokes, and kissing their ouchies; yet, it is still more. It is leading by example, introducing them to new things, encouraging them and challenging them to become stronger and better. It is walking and talking with them and opening their eyes to the world around them. It is correcting, helping, comforting, loving, teaching and nurturing them.
