I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. … The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. … How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! [Psalm 119: 15-16, 72, 103 (ESV)]
The more you read the Bible; and the more you meditate on it, the more you will be astonished with it. [Charles Spurgeon]
Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, is a song in praise of the Word of God. Since we don’t read this psalm in its original Hebrew, we fail to appreciate its intricate construction. Each of its twenty-two sections begin with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequence. Each of the eight verses in those twenty-two sections begin with the letter that introduced it. For example, the first word of the first section begins with alef, as do the next seven verses. In the second section, every line begins with beth. The psalm continues that way up to the 22nd (and last) section where every line begins with the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet, tav.
Using a variety of synonyms (such as words, ways, precepts, testimonies, commandments, path, and law), the psalmist mentions God’s word no less than 183 times! Believed to have been written by David, Jeremiah, Daniel or Ezra, the psalm’s author refers to himself as God’s servant and claims to praise God seven times a day. Whoever it was, penning a 176-line song about delighting in God’s word as an acrostic was a true labor of love.
I thought of this psalm when reading author Ann Voskamp’s description of the joy with which a nomadic tribe in Northern Kenya reacted when Bibles arrived in their village. Packed in cardboard boxes, God’s Word arrived on the back of a camel and was greeted by more than a thousand Rendille tribespeople along with dozens of their distant neighbors. After waiting 30 years for this day, the Rendille finally had Scripture’s words written in their own language. Having written praise songs specifically for the celebration, the women sang, “We give thanks to the Lord. The Word of God is like a pillar in our life. We give thanks to the Lord for this day for it is the first time we have the Bible in our own language.” Voskamp described how several women even slept with their Bibles under their pillows, “because it was treasured. They had nothing more valuable or priceless in their entire lives than God’s Word.” For these followers of Christ, their newly translated Bibles were better than “thousands of gold and silver pieces.”
Unlike the Rendille people, we’ve had God’s word in our own language since William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament in 1525; ten years later, the entire Bible was available in English. As the best-selling book of all time, Lifeway reports that about 85% of American homes have a Bible and the average household owns between four and five! While I suspect those Rendille tribespeople regularly read their Bibles, the Barna Group found that only about 35% of Americans ever read any of it and 36% of Americans never read at all! Yet, last year, the American Bible Society found that 71% of Americans are curious about the Bible and/or Jesus. There seems to be a disconnect here! If we’ve got questions about cooking, investing, bitcoins, or a medical condition, we research those topics. But, when we’re curious about the Bible or Jesus, those four plus Bibles in our homes remain unopened!
Both the psalmist and Rendille tribespeople celebrated God’s beautiful gift of Scripture. Finding it as “sweet as honey” and better than gold, they treasured this lamp to their feet and light for their path. After witnessing the Rendille’s enthusiastic response to the Bibles’ arrival along with their gratitude and joy in the Word, Voskamp asked herself, “How many Bibles do I have that are on my shelf collecting dust? Do I treasure God’s Word like this?”
Hers is a valid question and one we all should ask ourselves. Do we cherish and appreciate God’s word as did the author of Psalm 119? Do we receive God’s love letter to His people with the enthusiasm of the Rendille people? We should! After all, other than Jesus, it is the best gift God gave to man! Scripture’s words belong in our hearts rather than collecting dust in our bookcases!
I venture to say that the bulk of Christians spend more time in reading the newspaper than they do reading the Word of God. [Charles Spurgeon]
Most of us breeze through (or skip altogether) the Bible’s genealogies. Nevertheless, when genealogy and all those “begats” seem so important in Scripture, what explanation is there for the difference between the genealogies of Jesus found in Luke and Matthew? Because Jews were meticulous about recording genealogies, it’s inconceivable to have two conflicting yet correct lists of Jesus’ lineage.
The tradition of New Year’s resolutions goes back over 4,000 years to the ancient Babylonians (whose new year began in mid-March with the spring equinox). During their 12-day celebration called Akitu, they either crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the old one. To ensure the gods’ favor, they promised to return borrowed items and pledged the repayment of all their debts.
Tomorrow, December 6, is the Feast of St. Nicholas (or Sinterklass). Although it is difficult to know fact from fiction, we do know that St. Nicholas was born around 270 AD in Patara, a city in Lycia (modern day Turkey). The son of wealthy and devout parents, it was his uncle, the Bishop of Patara, who took charge of his spiritual life. Nicholas became the Bishop of Myra in Turkey, quite likely attended the council of Nicaea, spent seven years imprisoned under Diocletian Persecution, and died on December 6, around 343 AD. While we don’t know much about the man, he must have had a great impact on the early Christian church because, by 450 AD, churches in Asia Minor and Greece were named in his honor and, by the mid-6th century, the Emperor Justinian dedicated a church to him in Constantinople.
In C.S. Lewis’ children’s fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the youngest child, Lucy Pevensie, happens upon an enchanted armoire and steps into the magical world of Narnia. Upon returning, she rushes to tell her siblings of her astonishing adventure. Hearing such a tall tale and finding no concrete proof of its truth, her older siblings assume the story to be a figment of her imagination. They take their concern over her falsehood to their wise elderly uncle. He cautions them to use logic and consider Lucy’s story carefully. He points out there are only three possibilities: either she’s lying, crazy, or telling the truth. After pointing out that lies usually are more plausible than Lucy’s inexplicable tale, he asks if she’s lied before. The children admit she’s always been truthful. After pointing out that none of Lucy’s behavior indicates mental illness, they all agree she can’t have gone mad. He then suggests that since she’s neither a liar nor crazy, they could consider the possibility that Lucy’s story is true.
Pope Francis recently visited Singapore and, when speaking to young people at an interfaith meeting, he is reported to have said “All religions are paths to God.” After comparing the various religions to “different languages that express the divine,” he added, “There is only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sheik, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].” While the pontiff was encouraging interfaith dialogue, his words are troubling. I will not presume to know the Pope’s meaning or intention with his comments. Nevertheless, I find it important to address how the world understood the pontiff’s message.
Devotions of the Heart 