I have to admit it—I seldom look at Bible dictionaries.  They scare me a little.  I cannot read a word of Hebrew or Greek so how can I check out what these guys are saying?  At some point I just have to trust them.  That’s why I love it when the Bible itself tells us what a word means.  Sometimes you have to read carefully or you will miss it, usually because you have read past it all your life and can’t seem to stop that bad habit.  At least that’s my problem.  You have to pay attention when you read God’s Word, like every time you read it is the first time.
            And by doing just that I found a new, obvious definition.  Read Ezekiel with me.
            If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul, Ezek 3:18-21.
            Did you catch it?  God tells Ezekiel exactly what a righteous man is—someone who warns (and delivers his soul) or someone who listens to the warning and repents.  But what about the “righteous man” who commits injustice, you ask?  He has “turned from his righteousness” and “none of his righteous deeds are remembered,” which means he is no longer righteous.  The only two righteous people in that whole paragraph are the one who warns and the one who repents.
            Notice, God says nothing about the way he is warned.  If you have not read the book of Ezekiel you need to.  Ezekiel preached hard sermons.  He preached plain sermons.  Yet God still demanded that those people repent.  Getting their feelings hurt did not make them “righteous.”  Getting angry about the way they were spoken to did not make them “righteous.”  The only thing that made them “righteous” was heeding the warning and repenting. 
            Think about that Syrophenician mother who came asking Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter.  At first Jesus ignored her.   Then he insulted her.  If she had left with her feelings hurt, her daughter would never have been healed.  She understood that something was more important than her feelings.  And Jesus called that attitude “faith.”  Ah!  Another Bible definition.
            When I hear the warning, if I want to be counted righteous, I must stop blaming others and recognize my responsibility to listen and act.  The failures of others will not save me.
 
Take heed how you hear…Luke 18:8.
 
Dene Ward

Last year, before her death, I could not reach my mother one day, even after a full day of phoning.  I called her best friend Linda and asked if she could go check on her.  At least once before she had found her in the floor, unable to get up on her own.  So Linda, who lives in the same town as Mama and 25 miles closer than I, jumped in her car and ran over to her apartment.  As it turns out she was fine, but she had lost her phone.  She heard it ringing all day long and scoured the place (she thought) but was unable to find it.
            The next day we were in town for a class I was teaching, so Keith and a friend went to her apartment for a visit while I was occupied.  They, too, looked up and down and could not find the phone.  Keith ran downstairs to the front desk and asked them to call the phone while the friend waited there to help.  Surely one of them could follow the ring and find the thing before it went to voice mail.  The phone began ringing and they knew it was in the bedroom, but look high and low they still could not find the phone.
            When I returned from class, we tried again with my cell phone.  This time Keith went into the bedroom and this deaf man suddenly called out, "I found it!"  He walked out of the bedroom and said, "Come here."  He led us to my mother's bed.  "Do you see it?"  No, it hadn't been under anything like a pillow or robe, he said.  It was lying out right in the open.  Finally I saw it—right on the bed.  My mother's phone is magenta, sort of halfway between rose and purple, a little darker than fuschia.  The bedspread was white, decorated with pink, purple, and magenta roses.  Everyone who had walked into that bedroom looking for the phone had thought they were seeing another rose on the bed, a rose that was really a phone.
             We often do the same sort of thing when we study the Bible.  We can't see what is in plain sight because it is hidden by our preconceived notions, by the things "we've always heard," or by the instant acceptance of the mistaken ideas we grew up with as a child.  I have a husband who constantly questions things.  Some days it's very annoying, but if it hadn't been for him, I might never have discovered the truth of the matter in many of my Bible studies.
            For a quick example, how about that gate called the "eye of the needle" that everyone thinks exists in Jerusalem?  And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24).
           Our first problem is that we don't keep reading.  The very next verse says that the apostles were "astonished."  Why would they be astonished if this were a well-known gate where, according to some of the things I have heard preachers say, you had to unload your worldly goods off the camel and then have it go down on its knees to get through this tiny little slit of a gate?  That would make a great analogy, but the apostles, who would have known of such a thing, were flabbergasted, meaning they thought he meant the eye of a needle, not a gate.
            Second, Jesus used language just like we do.  He spoke in hyperboles quite often.  Have you ever seen a man going around with a two by four sticking out of his eye?  We go around using hyperboles all the time (notice what I did there?), and Jesus wanted to communicate with us in ordinary, everyday language so why wouldn't he do the same?  What Jesus was really saying was, "It's really, really difficult to be saved if you are wealthy."  But don't despair.  Even the disciples were a little slow on that one.  They took it literally, too, but we need to be careful of something we are constantly fussing at our friends about when they study the book of Revelation.  Sauce for the goose, and all that.
            And third, there is neither archaeological nor historical evidence of such a gate in ancient Jerusalem.  The first instance of this story occurred several centuries ago, which was many centuries after Jesus spoke these words.  Even the Talmud calls the "eye of the needle" a metaphor, a figure of speech.  But we wouldn't need this outside knowledge if we had just kept on reading, noting the disciples' reaction and using a little common sense.
          A lot of old chestnuts are floating around out there because we have gotten lazy.  We accept what we have always been told far too easily.  We don't look for the truth that is hidden in plain sight.  We are too blinded by what we have always believed, or heard, or read.  Be careful this week when you read God's Word.  Don't let the Truth hide among the roses.
 
Your testimonies are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.  (Ps 119:144).
 
Dene Ward

On August 27, 1776, George Washington and his troops retreated from New York City across the East River as the British swarmed the city.  On September 15 the redcoats raised the Union Jack and, for the rest of the Revolutionary War, New York served as the British Army Headquarters.  For seven long years the citizens endured poverty and mistreatment along with a devastating fire that left them all living in shacks made from old ships.  Over 10,000 American POWs died on prison ships floating in New York harbors.
            Finally, in mid-August, 1783, the British commander was given orders to evacuate.  England was giving up on the recalcitrant rebels.  The city had become a haven for loyalists so besides evacuating 20,000 British soldiers, the commander also had to make arrangements for those of his supporters who took advantage of England's offer of relocation.  Over 29,000 Tories were eventually evacuated to places like Nova Scotia, East Florida, and the Caribbean.
            The last British soldiers left on November 25, 1783.  Everything was timed so that as the last of them left, Washington and his troops would enter.  The time was set for noon.  A near disaster occurred when it was discovered that the British soldiers had left the Union Jack flying and greased the pole and removed the climbing cleats so that no one could take it down—several had tried and merely slid back to the ground.  A mad dash to a local hardware store ensued and just as Washington and his procession headed up the street, an army veteran named John Van Arsdale installed cleats one by one, climbing until he could reach the hated flag and tear it down.  Finally the American flag once again flew over New York City.
            New York Governor Henry Clinton arranged a dinner that evening in Washington's honor at Fraunces' Tavern in Lower Manhattan.  It is reported that 13 toasts were made in all, so we know the spirits were flowing.  For dessert Molly O'Neill reports that Washington was fed carrot cake, and that this is the first mention of that dessert anywhere (American Century Cookbook by Jean Anderson, p 435).  However, that tea cake, as it was called, was probably far healthier than the three layer carrot cake we know and love now.  Undoubtedly it was made with whole grain, rather than refined white flour, and since cream cheese had not yet been invented (1872), it was probably served quite plain.
            I still occasionally hear people talk about carrot cake being healthy.  The average slice of carrot layer cake with cream cheese frosting has about 580 calories, 30 grams of fat, 87 mg of cholesterol, and 415 mg of sodium.  Okay, it does have 105% of the required daily allowance of Vitamin A, thanks to those carrots, but only 1.5 grams of fiber to try and offset 73 grams of carbs. 
            We fall for these things all the time.  How about the Impossible Whopper?  Totally vegetarian, if not totally vegan.  (It is prepared on the same grill as regular Whoppers and thus absorbs some of that meat fat.)  But while a regular Whopper has 660 calories, an Impossible Whopper still has 630—not exactly diet fare.  A regular Whopper has 40 grams of fat, but the Impossible one has 34—not a huge savings.  But get this—a regular Whopper has 980 mg of sodium, the Impossible Whopper has 1080!  It has to—so it will taste decent.  (Double check—I found slightly different numbers on different websites, but they are all similar.)
            And we fall for these things spiritually as well, and the Devil is as happy as the Burger King adman is.  We think we can stay spiritually healthy with an hour or so in the Sunday morning worship.  We believe that as long as we "think about God" in our lives, it has the same benefit as personal Bible study and prayer.  We think that keeping our radios set on the Christian music station will help us stay holy, even if the lyrics spout unbiblical notions and unscriptural dogma—a spiritual carrot cake loaded with cream cheese frosting if ever there was one.  We think that because we pray at our meals, we are truly a spiritual family.  Meanwhile our children grow up starving for the meat of the Word and the company of strong Christians, people we had rather avoid because they make us feel uncomfortable with their obvious Christianity.
            Evacuation Day was a great event for those New Yorkers.  They still celebrated that day a century later, and they had every right to do so, even with a calorie and fat-laden modern carrot cake if they had had one back then.  But I doubt they would have eaten it every day thinking they were being "healthy." 
Too many of us eat spiritual carrot cake every day and think we are just fine.  Think again.
 
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.  (Jer 15:16).
 
Dene Ward

On November 3, 1906, a clinical psychiatrist and neuroanatomist reported a peculiar and severe disease process of the cerebral cortex in one of his patients.  She had been admitted to the Frankfurt Psychiatric Hospital for paranoia, progressive memory problems, sleep disturbance, cognitive impairment, and aggression.  He described her case at the 37th meeting of the South West German Psychiatrists, and attracted little interest at the time. 
            Five years later, that first patient, Auguste Deter, died at the age of 55.  Her doctor, Alois Alzheimer, kept up his research and treatment of similar patients.  Emil Kraepelin, another doctor, suggested that the new disease should be given the name Alzheimer's disease after the doctor who first recognized it.  Today, the methods for diagnosing the disease are still basically the same as those that first doctor himself used over 100 years ago, which in itself is amazing given the advances medicine has made.
            Alzheimer's may be one of the most feared diseases there is.  I know it scares me to think of still being alive and yet not being who I am any longer, being a burden to my family, or even mistreating them because of it.  We focus on the memory loss, and that may be the worst part.  18 years ago Keith suffered something called Transient Global Amnesia for about five days.  That was scary enough.  I think we just don't realize what a blessing memory is, even a memory that is a little faulty as we age normally.  At least something is still there.  But every time we suffer a lapse, we wonder…
            I walked into the kitchen and stopped, looking around at the counters, the stove top, the sink, the pantry. 
            Keith came in behind me and asked, “What are you looking for?”
            “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t remember,” and nothing lying around in plain view had jogged that memory, one that couldn’t have been over a minute old.  I have finally reached that stage when my memory is as fragile as my old lady bones.
            My short term memory, that is.  My memories of childhood, school, early marriage, and raising kids are firmly intact, and so are the memory verses I learned decades ago as a child.
            For a while there, memory verses seemed to be out of style.  I even heard a sister in Christ say their value was “overrated.”  She was even older than I.  I wonder how she feels now, especially during long nights when she can’t sleep, as happens so often to the elderly.
            Those memorized verses are invaluable to me.  They instantly spring to mind when I await another scary test result (“casting all your cares on him because he cares for you” 1 Pet 5:7); when the aches and pains of old age slow you down and you can no longer do what you have always done (“For this perishable body must put on the imperishable” 1 Cor 15:53); when friends and family pass on before you leaving a hole no one else can fill (“That you may not grieve as those who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” 1 Thes 4:13,14); when you suddenly realize you’ve reached an age where anything could happen any time (“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” Rev 14:13).
            All my life during times of temptation, suffering, and betrayal, but also joy, hope and thanksgiving, those passages memorized so long ago have kept me going.  They’ve helped me answer a skeptic, refute false teaching, encourage a suffering friend, and edify my sisters in Christ.  If I lost them all due to a disease, I cannot imagine how empty I would feel.  Those words etched on the hearts of you and your children are anything but overrated.  Fill up your children now, and while you’re at it, fill yourself up before your memory, too, becomes as fragile as your bones.
 
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, Deut 11:18-20

Dene Ward

No, that title is not a typo.  Well, it is actually—a typo on purpose.  That is what happens when you try to type “One Key Off” with your hands exactly one key off from the correct starting position.  Even when you make the right moves with the correct hands you get something that makes no sense, that isn’t even pronounceable.
            How many times do we do that with the Bible?  We start studying in the middle of things, with the most difficult things, with things that do not even apply to our lives.  What do we get?  A big mess. 
            If one fundamental fact is wrong, you create a long line of false doctrine.  Calvinism, anyone?
            If one step in logic is left out, you find yourself believing something so ridiculous, you may eventually lose your faith altogether when you come to your senses, or worse, actually come to believe it so emphatically that you take others down the drain with you.  How else do some of these strange cults get their start?
            If you get bogged down in things far removed from what you really need to get through life, how will you ever grow?
            Isn’t it odd that simply being one key away can make such a huge difference?  Be careful where you put your time studying the scriptures.  Match one passage with another.  Anytime your interpretation of something does not jive with another scripture, my guess is that you are at least one key off, maybe more. 
            Start with the simple, start with what you need to believe to be in Christ.  Then move to what you need to live your life every day.  Worry about Revelation and Zechariah a little further down the road.  Find someone you can trust to help you.  Elders come to mind, and good Bible class teachers.  But whatever you do, be careful where you put your faith.  One step away from the truth is not a good place to be.
 
Hold the pattern of sound words which you heard from me, in faith and love which is in Jesus Christ.  2 Tim 1;13.   
 
Dene Ward

I have been doing a lot of outside reading for some classes I am teaching, and find myself reading blurbs on the backs of these books at odd times, usually when my mind needs a rest from all the scholarly stuff my old and feeble brain is trying to make sense of.  I saw this one a few weeks ago and it stopped me in my tracks.
            “In Story as Torah Gordon Wenham showed how biblical narrative texts little used by ethicists, can inform Christian moral teaching.”  John Barton, University of Oxford.
            In other words, the man has written a book in which he uses the Bible “stories,” as we are prone to call them, to teach us right and wrong.  First, I do understand that the word “inform” has a special meaning in scholarly circles, but it still seems plain to me that the critic is saying that using the Bible this way is highly unusual, in fact, a groundbreaking idea. 
            I sit here wondering why they are reading their Bibles at all if they have not figured this out before.  We do this every Sunday in Bible classes.  I did it every day when my children were growing up.  I do it now when my grandsons come for a visit.  We talk about the Bible narratives and how they teach us we should be behaving in our lives.  We talk about Noah and how “everyone is doing it,” proves that “it” is probably wrong.  We talk about Daniel and how important prayer is, and how God takes care of the faithful.  We talk about Elijah and the One True God.  We talk about Judas and betrayal, about Peter and impetuosity—and then forgiveness.  We talk about Jonah and God’s love for everyone and our responsibility to share that love.  My children grew up knowing what the Bible is for.  What in the world did these people think they should do with it?
            And we can laugh at them and think ourselves so much better than they, but are we?  We know the Bible is to be used to “inform” our lives, but does it?  Does the sermon go in one ear and out the other?  Do the Bible classes become exercises in finding yet another way to bring up my pet hobby, or to show everyone how much I know instead of finding something I need to improve on?  Do I give the right answers and then go out and live the wrong ones?
            Before we laugh at men who have become a little too smart for their own good, let’s check our own behavior.  We may know better, but are we doing it?
 
Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come, 1Cor 10:6-11.
 
Dene Ward
 

Retirement is a wonderful thing.  No more rushing around every morning, swallowing a quick breakfast whole, throwing on an outfit, and rushing out the door after a quick peck on your wife’s cheek.  At least that’s the way it was for Keith for several decades. 
            Now it’s a leisurely breakfast in your pajamas with a second cup of coffee, and then a third out on the carport, watching the birds swoop down in front of us to the bird feeder, hummingbirds battling over their feeder like tiny pilots in fighter planes, and Chloe sitting next to us, her tail swishing sparkly grains of sand over the concrete. 
           We have a little ritual with her—three or four doggie treats that Keith sails out toward the flower bed one at a time with her tearing after them, sniffing around in the grass until she finds the morsel, then rolling in the dew wet grass in doggy euphoria before returning to her post at our feet, or even under our chairs—the better to garner a belly rub.
            He always throws the treats in the same direction, slightly south of east, and makes the same whistle like a missile falling to the earth, and she has become habituated to the whole routine.  We did not realize how much until one morning he threw it north of east instead of south.  Even though she watched him do it, she still ran southeast and sniffed the ground in ever widening circles, becoming more and more frustrated when she could not find the treat.  Finally he had to get up and walk in the direction he threw it and call her over.  Eventually her nose found it, but you would have thought we had punished her as she dragged herself back without her customary cheerfulness, her tail sagging almost between her legs.  She was not happy again until he had thrown the next treat in the right direction—translation:  the one she expected.
            Have you ever shown a friend a scripture that teaches something obvious, only to have him say, “I can’t see that?”  Have you ever had her read something out loud only to answer your unspoken comment with, “But I don’t believe it that way?”  Almost unbelievable, isn’t it?  Don’t think for a minute that you are immune to the same failing.  What you can see, what you do believe, depends a whole lot on what you are looking for. 
            The worst thing you can do in your Bible study is go searching for something to back up what you already think.  In fact, I often tell brand new classes, “The biggest hindrance to learning is what you think you already know.”  I have had students who were intelligent and sincere look at something everyone else could see but not see it, and nearly every time it is because of some preconceived notion they grew up with or heard somewhere a long time ago and have not been able to let go.  Even something as plain as the nose on their faces.
            What you already know will also raise a stop sign in your learning path.  As soon as you find what you thought was there, you will stop looking, when just a little more study and uninhibited consideration would have shown you something brand new.  The same thing happens when you rely on old notes.  You will never see anything new until you rid yourself of old ideas.  You will never find a deeper understanding if you think you have already dredged as far as you can go.
            Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind,” John 9:39.  He was not talking to unbelievers.  He was not talking to pagans.  He was talking to people who thought they knew God’s word inside out, who could quote whole books, who kept the law in the minutest detail, proud of how exact they were—even beyond exact—and the fact that they were children of Abraham.  Guess who that translates to today? 
            When was the last time you learned anything new?  Thought any new thoughts?  Discovered any new connections in the scriptures?  When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  Can you see it if it’s thrown in a direction you never thought of before, or are you as blind as those people who were sure they knew what their Messiah would look like and how he would act?  When he came out of left field, they were lost.  How about you?
 
…and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself…? Rom 2:19-21.
 
Dene Ward
 

You can find some strange things in the footnotes.  Sometimes they illuminate the text you are reading, but sometimes they cause even more confusion.  Sometimes they answer the questions in your mind, and other times they cause even more.  Sometimes they sound like utter gibberish—sometimes they are in another language and might as well be gibberish.  And sometimes they are downright funny, as was the case this past Sunday morning.
 
You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Fool! ’ will be subject to the Sanhedrin. But whoever says, ‘You moron! ’ will be subject to hellfire.  (Matt 5:21-22)
 
            Perhaps it is because I was reading this out of my newest Bible, a Holman Christian Standard I purchased because it has the largest "large print" I have ever seen, that I paid more attention than usual to those verses.  I mean, that last line really gets your attention.  Then I noticed the footnote on the word "fool" and laughed out loud.
 
             "Literally Raca, an Arab term of abuse similar to 'airhead.' "
 
            Airhead?  Do you mean the ancients talked like that too?  Of course they did.  People have not changed for centuries.  But reading that footnote also hit home.  When I was driving, one of the more common terms I tended to use about other drivers was, "Idiot."  What other term better fits people who swerve in and out of traffic at high speed, tailgate at those same speeds, text while driving, suddenly slow down ten miles an hour whenever they answer their phones as if that will instantly make them safe drivers despite the distraction, sit at a stop sign while you approach on the main road at the posted speed of 55 and then pull out when you are a car length away?  Idiots, all of them.
            And then, reading that new version and knowing what that footnote said, made me wonder why the Lord connected calling people "airhead," or something similar, with murder.  I have pondered this for a few days now and maybe I have it.  When you consider someone to be that kind of person, whether you use the word airhead, moron, idiot, or "things like these" (cf Gal 5:21), you really mean they are not worth caring about, not worth your consideration, not worth "the air they breathe or the space they take up," as some would say.  And that is exactly the mentality you must have to commit murder.  De-humanizing in any manner someone made in the image of God, someone whom Christ also died for, would make it a whole lot easier to simply eradicate them.  I may not realize that is what I am doing when I call people these names, but it is, and that is exactly why I should never have done it in the first place.
            Even if they don't drive, or talk, or act, or live--or vote--like I want them to.
 
A fool’s displeasure is known at once, but whoever ignores an insult is sensible.  (Prov 12:16).
 
Dene Ward

I am constantly shocked by the way people, including Christians, treat the Bible.  We act like God wrote it in some way other than normal communication.  I have actually heard these things come out of the mouths of believers:  “Jesus never used figurative language.”  “You won’t find irony in the Bible.”  “Sarcasm is neither present nor allowed in the scriptures.”  And because of that you will hear some of the weirdest interpretations of scripture imaginable.
            We knew a man once who said that since Jesus said you should not “let your right hand know what your left hand doeth,” that you should reach into your pocket before the plate is passed and take out whatever you find without looking at it.  I wonder how he got whatever was in his pocket in there that morning without knowing what it was, or did he make sure nothing over $10 was lying on top of his dresser?           
            But you will also find those who deny there is any literary aspect to the scriptures at all.  Try studying the psalms in detail and see if you think that’s so.  The psalms are poetry.  Like all poets, those inspired poets used poetic elements to make them catch our fancy, speak to us more keenly than prose would, and make us think deeper thoughts than we might have otherwise.  You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.  Doesn’t that say more to you than, “These people are really upset”?
            One place this is obvious are the fifteen Psalms of Ascents.  Psalms 120-134 are presumed to have been sung while the Jews traveled up the hill to Jerusalem to worship on the various feast days.  The word for “ascents” is the same Hebrew word translated “steps” in Ezek 40:26 and 31, as in the steps of a staircase.  One psalm in particular uses words to show these steps.
            Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.  Psalm 130.
            Imagine each of the following words, taken in order from the psalm above, sitting on the steps of a staircase from bottom to top:  depths, pleas, iniquities, wait, hope, steadfast love, plentiful redemption.  Now add this to the mix:  the word for “depths” is used several times in the scripture for the deepest places on earth, including the very bottom of the ocean.  And that implies a man’s complete inability to get himself “out of the depths.”  All through this psalm we see the literary devices of the poet, gradually pulling us out of the mire we are stuck in and up the staircase to the place of full—and even more than necessary, “plentiful”—redemption.  God didn’t barely save us, He pulled us up on top of the mountains.  Read through that psalm again now.  Can you see it?  Can feel it? 
            God is the one who made us able to appreciate art of all kinds, including literary art.  He gave us the emotions that a good artist of any type can evoke.  It’s one of the things that makes you different from your dog!  God wrote the Bible.  He made you and made you able to communicate.  He speaks to us the way He knows is best for our understanding.  Who am I to say otherwise?
 
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person discerns all things…1Cor 2:14-15.
 
Dene Ward

I live where the animals meditate quite often.  When we first moved here, the bobcats screamed in the woods every night.  Even after all these years of people moving closer and closer in on us, the mourning doves still cry and moan every day, morning and evening.  I hear one out there now even as I type.
            “Meditate?” you ask. 
            Exactly.
            For thus the LORD said to me, As a lion or a young lion roars over his prey… Isa 31:4.
            Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I mourn like a dove…Isa 38:14.
            “Roars” and “mourn” are the same Hebrew word translated “meditate” in the KJV, including this one:  But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.  Ps 1:2.
            I grew up in a time when “transcendental meditation” was popular.  Most of those who participated sat in the lotus position and hummed the syllable in the above title.  I have no idea what was in their minds at the time, but it seems a far cry from the passages above.  Yet, from what I have seen, we don’t really understand what meditation is any better than they did.
            A Bible class teacher once told us he had decided to meditate more.  He did this by memorizing a passage every week and then reciting it at various times during the day.  As he continued talking, it seemed he expected that repetition to magically change his attitudes and his heart.  As an educator, I understand that repetition is the key to learning, but simple repetition itself is as useless to your heart as repeating Hail Marys.  The New Testament calls such things “vain repetition.”  Maybe it’s time to see what the Bible says about meditating instead of what the world does.
            I looked up every occurrence of the Hebrew word found in the three passages above.  I found 24.  In the King James Version, the word is translated “meditate” 6 times, which is the most frequent translation.  But here is a really interesting case.  While in Psalm 1:2, the word speaks of the action of a righteous man, in Psalm 2:1, the action is of the wicked and is translated “plot” in the ESV (“imagine” in the KJV).  The word clearly involves some mental activity.  In Psalm 38:12 the wicked are imagining “treachery all day long.”  In fact, in the ESV that is translated “meditating” treachery.
            Seven times the word is translated “speak” or “talk” or “utter” so it does involve sound, but not that mindless hum or rote repetition so many think.  If you check out the passages, the wicked “speak” (meditate) deceit or perverseness or falsehood.  The righteous “speak” (meditate) wisdom and truth, and “talk of” (meditate) God’s praise and righteousness.  Try doing any of those things without some serious thought.
            So where does the “sound” involved in this word come from?  Sheer effort and emotion.  The young lion roaring over his prey in the Isaiah 31 passage has reached a moment of intense effort in his hunt for food.  Although the dove is not really mourning, the passage is a metaphor for God mourning over his lost people, trying to save them.  Imagine reaching out to grab someone who is about to take a serious fall, or step in front of an oncoming vehicle.  Would you do it quietly?
            No, meditating on God’s word is not a time of quiet, mindless repetition.  It is a time of intense mental effort.  “Ponder how to answer” the ESV translates it in Prov 15:28.  Run it over and over in your mind for the various possibilities, for the possible results of actions or the ideas to which those thought processes might lead.  Meditate today on meditation, for clues in the texts themselves or, as we have done, in how the word is used in other places.  Memorizing is wonderful.  Reading the word of God is a necessity for one of his children, but if all you do is speak the words either aloud or in your mind, you have done no better than a pagan on his yoga mat.
 
Be diligent in these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy progress may be manifest unto all.  1Tim 4:15
 
Dene Ward