Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Psalm 34:8-9
This was the “O” verse on round one.
So my dad made these flippy 3x5 cards for us all when we were little. Flip, flip, flip, right through the alphabet.
And be sure your sins will find you out.
Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Casting all your cares upon Him for He cares for you...
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
And after we learned them all, he made a new set, so we all knew 52 verses as well as we knew the multiplication tables. Sort of. The thing is, I use the multiplication tables all day long, every day. Over and over. Seamlessly into practically every aspect of life.
Is that true for Scripture?
Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee?
I have such a vivid memory of picking my way across the powdery dust dirt with lots of mixed in gravel that is left over from making a highway, which was the stuff of pathways through Barrio Nuestra Esfuerza. And I do not exactly remember whether I was coming back from the feeding center, or from visiting a sick baby, or probably maybe just coming back from visiting Ramoncita in her backyard sipping a tiny cup of freshly roasted over an open fire thick black expresso, maybe sorting rocks out of the beans for the next day’s meal. Whatever. What I remember is that this idea of tasting and seeing that the LORD is good had been in my thoughts all day. And in that moment, suddenly I got it. In the shouts of a baseball game over at the “play,” in the tattered clothing draped over barbed wire fences to dry, in the quiet smiles from dark doorways from little ones clutching their momma’s knees, this was the tasting and seeing. The LORD is good. And how very blessed we were – His children– in that moment. Seven hundred and thirteen, seven hundred and fourteen, seven hundred and fifteen.
Chris is working our way through the idea of God’s Word Still Speaks this month at the Vineyard. So I am considering this idea of Still Speaking even as I am listening to someone on NPR discuss, well actually tirade, there is no discussion about it, the inconceivability that any sane and healthy person could still hold the Bible as true, I gotta say that even though I don’t get it, I know it. Somehow
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
I remember when I was a smarty-pants nineteen-year-old who smugly decided that these Words hid in my heart were mere cultural trappings and fables passed along in the same vein as the truism passed along by my father, who wears a size 13 shoe, that big feet are a sign of intelligence.
So I tried to march off into my own paths, lit by my own inner light, but something happened. I smacked into Life. And I discovered Truth, in the same way that the memorized multiplication tables all the way up to 25 x 25 are true and are measurable and applicable and woven into the very nuclear strands which hold everything together and cannot be avoided no matter how hard one tries to avoid mathematics. Pretend all you want to. It’s there. Everywhere. And there is a Shepherd determined to make me lie down in green pastures and lead me beside still waters. Gonna chase me down. Each of us down.
and thus, LORD today I pray that You may
Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.
Round two.
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