Most nights at the dinner table, if we have any semblance of a full meal (in other words, something besides pizza or cereal), the meal becomes a battle of wills. Will Rebekah eat her food, or will we end up giving her a spanking for disobeying us? There is nothing wrong with her food; in fact, most of the time it is delicious and cut into bite-size pieces just for her.
And yet, meal time is a struggle, as we ask her to stop playing and eat. Finding creative ways to encourage and not discourage her to eat. Trying to understand her disobedience.
Why? Why will she just not eat the food placed in front of her?
And not only this, but bedtime arrives with a complaint of being hungry. She is then reminded if she had eaten more dinner, she would not be hungry.
A few nights ago as all this ensued at dinner time, that now familiar nudge came: ”Don’t you treat your time with God’s Word the same way? It’s all laid out and ready for you to take in, digest, and feed your soul and mind. Yet how lightly do you treat it, acting like you don’t need the sustenance for that meal? Then the storms come or you go a day or two, and you get hungry.”
Ouch. Yes, Lord, it’s true.
How careless I tend to treat my time in God’s Word, even though I say I love it and know it is good for me. I do not have a desire for it as the psalmist wrote: ”I have longed after thy precepts” (Psalm 119:40, KJV).
Psalm 42:1 echoes the thought: ”As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul thirsts for you, O God.” May I answer, as the psalmist does in verse 11:
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
Psalm 42:11, KJV
Heavenly Father, may we long for your Word more than we desire the things of this world. Forgive me for treating my time with You so lightly. Draw us to You, sustain us with Your matchless strength, so that we may be prepared to reach the lost and dying so near to us every day.
”O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.” (Psalm 34:8, KJV)
