3:00am musings on a couple of things

Tho I think it's actually closer to 3:30am now...

Absolutely no idea why I'm up, kind of wishing I wasn't as I can feel that I'm tired and would prefer to be getting a decent night's sleep because I can... but there it is, and here I am, and we'll see what happens next....

Been kicking a lot of things around in my head lately - which could be part of it, I guess. Maybe my brain has decided it's time to sort through some of it so it can rest properly...lol. So Thing 1 - I'm going camping this weekend with about 25 other people from Torch; should be fun. "Fun..." I love that word. As it can mean all sorts of things, including the opposite of itself. ;) Hoping the mosquitos haven't noticed it's been raining half the week and have not multiplied inexplicably (again). Taking bug spray. Lots. I do like camping, actually. I'm just rather anti-insect. I'd personally just rather go camping in the fall when you can bundle up at night and be relatively bug-free during the day.

Thing 2 - God's Word. Can I tell you how much I love this Book? Erin posted very honestly a few days ago about some of her struggles in reading it, and her post (including some of the interesting conversation following it) has gotten me thinking about my own journey with the Book. I was very blessed as a relatively new Christian to be given a Bible by two staffers from the summer camp at which I came to Christ. These two guys has pretty much pulled an all-nighter, praying for a few of their campers, and asking God to lead them to verses that would be particularly helpful to us throughout our lives. They labeled it the "Emergency Scripture List" and wrote it out on the back cover, and let me tell you, I could probably fill a book with how much each of those verses has come to mean to me since then...

Something one of them wrote towards the middle of the ESL has really stuck with me: "God's Word takes a lifetime - an eternal lifetime? - to experience."

Ah. So there's time. And I don't have to get it all at once. And if I don't understand it, it's okay because someday - "here, there, or in the air" - I will. And I think one of the things I love most about the Book is that it isn't dependent on me to understand it to be true. And you can get into all kinds of contextual and historical and translational arguments if you like - and a lot of that conversation is interesting - but to be honest, at the end of the day, I know the Book is true because reading it has changed me in a way that no other book has. Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV) says: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The NIV says it is "living and active" and I have found this to be true. It's gotten into my blood, into the very structure of who I am - it shapes the way I think, the way I behave, the questions that I wrestle with. Everything comes back to the Book, because it's the only thing I can be absolutely sure that God has said. And anything else I think He says, through circumstance, that quiet voice in my spirit, through other people - it all gets held up to the Book, because it says that God doesn't change, so the sort of things He would say won't change either.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that every time I sit down to read the Bible I have some sort of crazy cool mystical experience or anything. Most of the time it isn't like that - a lot of the time it's simply reading, and trusting God's Spirit to hide His word in my heart (tangent - while I was looking up the verse that idea comes from, I found all this, and it was a good rabbit trail, looking at the associations between word and heart throughout the Bible) so that when I need it, it'll be there - and the Holy Spirit does bring His word to mind when I need it - sometimes to encourage someone, sometimes to convict me about something... 2 Timothy 3:15-17 tells us that all Scripture has a purpose (even the geneologies!). And I get to spend my lifetime searching that out, with the Teacher who wrote it, and who knows the reasons for every stroke of the pens that recorded it for Him.

One more thought... while I can look back and say how blessed I am to have been given such a personal connection with the Word at an early age - I have taken that for granted so often. There have been seasons where my Bible has collected dust, and there are days when I do not pick it up (to my detriment, I think), and there are moments when I hear the phrase "search the Scriptures" spouted as advice and want to scream because I haven't the faintest idea how to do that. But if you think about, those of us who have a Bible or the internet (and therefore access to it) are so richly blessed. There are entire nations who still don't have His Word in their language. There are people all over the world who would give anything for a copy of the Book but can't afford it, or don't have access to it... but we do.

And this love for the Book I started writing about an hour ago? I asked for it. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? But I'd been walking with God for 17 years before I thought to do it. And there are days I don't feel it. There are days I don't feel love at all - but it doesn't mean I don't love. Love is a choice, not an emotion. I like it when it comes with emotion. It's nice. It feels good. But I do love this Book, as I love the One who wrote it, and so even when I'm not feeling it, I will still act on it. I will read it. I will memorize it. And I will teach it.

One of the coolest things I've ever been privileged to experience was sitting in the Chapel at my college, and hearing three men who loved the Book tell us - from memory - the entire book of Revelation. It was amazing. And the next year, they did Romans. It was a lot of work - they met every week early in the morning for breakfast and worked on memorizing it together - but they did it, and it blessed us immeasurably. I mean, seriously, years later, here I am, writing about how hearing God's Word spoken like that affected me so deeply. Deeply enough that I want to give others the same gift. I'm memorizing Ephesians. And I have to tell you, knowing chapter one fairly well now - going back and reading it is like sitting down to coffee with a good friend by a fire on a cold winter night when there's fresh snow fall and moonlight on the lake...

So my prayer for you, on this extremely early mid-western summer morning, is simply this: that God's Spirit would breathe new life into your time with the Book today, and that you would truly come to love this Book. Amen.