Insights

When my children were toddlers, they would “read” their books. They would pretend to tell the stories by pointing to the pictures or repeating the plots they had heard read to them over and over again. Sometimes the book would be upside down and the pages missing, but a good story is hard to put down. We can read the Bible and many of us can recite passages, but the Bible is meant to transform us as it reveals who God is and the gospel message.  We don’t just need to read the word, but consume it enough that it transforms us.
 

Not one. Not two, but three people in the Bible were told to eat the words from the Lord. After eating the word, Jeremiah expressed, “ your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” ( Jeremiah 15:16).  For both Ezekiel and the apostle John the words of the Lord were described at first as being “as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 3:3, Revelation 10:9). I love the metaphor of eating and consuming  the word of the Lord. It is a way of describing the word filling us and becoming a part of our being. Eugene Peterson writes, “Words spoken or written to us under the metaphor of eating, words to be freely taken in, tasted, chewed, savored, swallowed, and digested, have a different effect on us…” The Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God that has no need of other documents to complete the gospel message. We should consume the life-giving gospel.  The effect of really reading deeply the Bible should be a closer relationship and understanding of the Lord. Eugene Peterson suggests that “…spiritual writing- Spirit sourced writing-requires spiritual reading… a reading that honors words as holy, words as a basic means of forming an intricate web of relationships between God and the human, between all things visible and invisible.” We can’t walk away and still be the same. Taste and see that the word of the Lord is sweet! Eat the Word.
 

Leah Rabb
Elementary Education Principal
Logos Preparatory Academy