A Lesson from my Dog, Part II

If I were a person of at least average intelligence, I would be able to download a photograph I just took of our dog, Moses, with a look of intense, focused attentiveness on his face. Let me describe the scene: two of our boys are eating scrambled eggs for breakfast (one of the few things I can cook really well). Eggs--of any form whatsoever--happen to be Moses' favorite food. Now mind you, this is not saying much since he will eat virtually any food under the sun except, we have learned, raw garlic still in the bulb covered with that annoying skin. I guess he is concerned about his breath--I told you he is a wonderful, thoughtful dog. At any rate, whenever anyone in the house is eating anything, Moses rushes to the scene of the action, prepared like a canine boy scout, for any and all action. If even the tiniest morsel happens to drop to the floor, he is on it in a microsecond. It sure has helped with our sweeping the kitchen floor. But, boy, when I break out the eggs, Moses is especially excited and attentive.

Back to the photograph: the boys are eating eggs at the counter, and Moses stares at them with laser-like focus, ears pointed straight up, head raised and alert, eyes zeroed in on every movement of their forks. If you knew Moses, you would be especially impressed, because the other 99% of his day is spent lounging... or resting... well, actually sleeping, often with a thunderous snore. But bring out the food--especially the eggs-- and he is so totally on it.

As I snapped his picture, though, I couldn't help asking myself, is that my attitude with the Lord and His Word? Do I approach the Lord and time spent in His supernatural spiritual food--the Bible--with the same focus and attentiveness, desperate and excited to glean whatever He has to say to me that day?

So many verses speak of the beauty and infinite value of God's Word. Ps.119:105 tells us "Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to for path." Hebrews 4:12 declares: "For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

One of my favorites on this topic, Jeremiah 15:16 tells us that "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O Lord, God of hosts." Does that reflect my attitude towards God's Word? Daily reading and eating it--attentive, focused, joyful, expectant? God wants to speak to us today. He has words of love, comfort, conviction, guidance, wisdom, hope, warning, and strength... just for you, just for me, just what He wants us to hear and understand for today. Are we too busy? too preoccupied? too overwhelmed? too prideful?

Really?! The One who knows every hair on our head as well as our secret thoughts and our deepest insecurities and fears and our greatest needs--we are too busy or preoccupied for His supernatural words of help and enablement? How convicted I am that at times this reflects my essentially indifferent, foolish attitude towards His Word. I can sometimes read the Bible with a lackadaisical approach or perhaps with the air of "let's get this checked off my to do list." How terribly costly is such indifference! How much I miss when I fail to come before the throne with attentive wonder and eager expectancy that the Lord of the universe is speaking to me, right at that moment in time. Pretty incredible, when you consider it--frail, selfish, petulant, prideful little dust people have the infinite, omnipotent Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer speaking directly to each one of them.

Diedrich Bonhoeffer, the brilliant German theologian killed in a nazi concentration camp for conspiring against Hitler during World War II, wrote these words about God speaking through the Bible:

"First of all I will confess quite simply- I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. This is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in or minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love, and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us alone with our questions, only then shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible…

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which will not be congenial to me. This place is the cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all; it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only the New but also in the Old Testament….

And, I would like to tell you now quite personally: since I have learnt to read the Bible in this way- and this has not been so very long- it becomes every day more wonderful to me. I read it in the morning and the evening, often during the day as well, and every day I consider a text which I have chosen for the whole week, and try to sink deeply into it, so as to really hear what it is saying. I know that without this I could not live properly any longer."

That's a long quote, but such profound words. God longs to speak to us through His Word. Will we listen? Really listen? If my sweet old dog can exhibit such attentiveness and expectancy over some scrambled eggs, surely we can approach the eternal spiritual sustenance the Lord God longs to give each of us with equal fervor and hunger. He has spoken. He is speaking. He will speak. Come hungry and expectant to His banquet table! To God, our Sustenance, our Living Word, be the glory.