Delight in DeWord

In Christian circles you may come across people talking about the importance of reading the Bible.

In my experience Bible knowledge has been a much admired ability.  Being able to recite swathes of scripture has been a mark of super spirituality and people refer to being able to use scripture to defeat the enemy.  Mention is made of how Jesus was able to overcome the temptations of the enemy by His Word power.

That has lead to a great prominence in the academic and highly literate.  If you know your Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and clauses and syntax and metaphors and cultural uses for terms then you are highly vaunted among some.

I certainly want to establish again that it is important to know the Word.  This is not knocking that basic.  I read something the other day, coming back to Psalm 1.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:2)

Something arrested me about the place of delight.  What is that all about?  Well, allow me a little venture in ‘de’ world of delight.

Finding delight in something about an emotional and intellectual thrill.  Something that brings a smile to your face.  Something that gets you rubbing your hands in anticipation of what you’re going to do.

You know about delight.  It’s a feeling you get, it’s not just a ‘good’ feeling, it’s much better than that.  If I can go there – and I can, so I am, often having enjoyed marital relations husband and wife can often reflect on a most delightful experience.

For some it’s that cup of coffee in the morning.  (Of course I’m still praying them, but you get the point.)  For some it’s getting that thing in the shops.  For some it’s watching their sports team do well.  For some it’s the gardening.  For some it’s painting.

Whatever it is, there is an investment of something personal before it, during it and after it.  That investment is emotional as well as anything else.  There is a love about it.

Applying that to reading scripture won’t work for everyone, because not everyone likes reading.  I would contend that the point is not to get people to love reading.  The point is to get people in love with engaging with the loved one.

That’s where the meditating comes in.  We’re dwelling on something we delight in.  It’s like giving analysis on the great film you watched the other day.  It’s like the commentary on the game.  You’re going over it again and again from above and below and the side, in slow motion.  Why?

Why?  Because it’s something you love.  Not only that, it’s from someone you love.  Not only that, it is someone you love.

For as you dwell on what God has said to you, there’s a chance to hear Him sharing Himself to you.  In the same way the married couple delight in each other, so we delight in knowing Him who loved us first.  We dwell on what He says, because it’s His heart, it’s Him sharing Himself with us.

There has to be that delight in Him, to make delighting in His Word make sense.  That’s why it’s a spiritual thing.  That’s why it’s not exclusively in the preserve of the academic and the scholarly.

It’s as much to be seen in the illiterate elderly lady who got most of her development through choruses, hymns and spiritual songs.  It’s as much to enjoyed in the child drawing the picture of the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea.  It’s as much to be experienced over a great meal with the saints of the Most High culminating in broken bread and poured out wine.

Delighting in the word, meditating on it day and night is a holistic exercise in loving God.  It’s one we’re all invited to because we all benefit from it.

It’s one we can help others to experience the benefits from it as we share our own meditations of what a delight it is to know deWord.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden