Like a Dog with His Bone

I'm starting to realize how You've been changing me and working in me throughout these forty days Lord. I'm starting to realize how it is all coming together, and it's amazing.

You started by telling me to savor my experience, a lesson that could be applied to a lot of things.

Then you lead me through a tough time of realizing the necessity of balance between silently waiting and moving to do, where I realized that to do Your will, I'm going to need to slow down significantly, lingering over Your touch in my life.

You lead me to a realization that I need to put my feet on the floor and hold things up in You. It is the way of fear-of-the-Lord.

As You did this, You started to lead me in considering my next forty days. You convicted me that it should be one of silence and study.

And today You've started moving me again in that way. In combining all the stuff that I've been learning into one central concept. It's a concept that I have been dabbling with and now am extremely excited to move into full force. You have brought me to begin a new type of relationsip with You and Your Word. You are teaching me to "Eat Your Book."

That's right, like a dog delighting in his bone so I should savor, linger, roll my tongue around, and hold onto the words of Your Word. I am seeing (with the help of Eugene) that spiritual writing (we accept that the writing of the Bible is guided by the Holy Spirit) requires spiritual reading. This spiritual reading means taking my time, moving off like a dog taking his bone to a private place, and devouring the Words of Scripture.

This means finding silence and space. You were already moving me toward this with the prompting of my next forty days. This morning I found myself caught up in this Scripture:

Lamentations 3:25-28: The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him.

Yes Lord, You have laid it on me to sit alone in silence, to wait quietly for my salvation. And in so waiting on the Spirit, to take up the Holy Text and savor it, linger over it, taste it deep in my soul. How certainly it will be sweet as honey on my lips, and there will be days where it will cause my stomach to be bitter. But I am awakened by the thought of taste.

And of course, a fast where I have refrained from eating. In the end, God of amazing foresight, You are teaching me that it is not about refraining from eating. Instead, taste and appetite are Your gifts, and I should instead turn these metaphors directly to Your Book. With the true hunger that I have for food for my body near day thirty, let me always have that hunger for Your Word. And let me expect for it to be quenched as I eat Your Book.