Observation: The book of Numbers closes with God's laws about intermarriage between Israelite tribes, and what happens to the lands of one tribe when one of their daughters marry into another.
Application: If I'm being one hundred percent honest, this morning has been a little rough, and turning to this text from the Daily Lectionary, I was utterly disappointed. I come to God's word needing encouragement, and I get 3,000 year old inheritance law. Okay.
Lots of times when something like this pops up in my devotions, I'll just pick another text and use that one, but I was thinking that might end up being harmful to people reading this. Here's why.
It may shock you to learn that as a kid, I was not head-over-heels in love with the Bible. I tried what many young readers do--which was to start reading it like a novel, from Genesis 1 on. And if you've ever tried that, you know that about two thirds of the way through Exodus, you get bogged down in laws and regulations, and if you're looking for an inspiring yarn, you'll get frustrated pretty quick.
If you grow up among people of faith, you may sometimes get the impression that everyone around you--maybe everyone except you--is totally inspired and enriched by every word of the Bible, all the time, and if it ever falls flat or is hard to understand, that's your problem. That if you don't get a rush of endorphins every time you open those sacred pages, you're defective. That is so not true.
Most people don't fall in love with God's word overnight. They fall in love with it over a long period of time, of learning the history behind it, of talking with other people about how it applies to their life, of underlining stuff and coming back to it later, remembering what they were going through the last time they read it. They fall in love with the Bible by committing to read it even when they don't feel like it's the first thing they want to do each morning. And sometimes, by powering through a text that God put there for a reason, but clearly that reason wasn't to give you your personal spiritual "get up and go" on this particular morning.
People manage to fall in love with all sorts of stuff they wouldn't have a natural affinity for. It happens all the time. And it happens because they just get down to business and try it enough times so they start to have really good days in the midst of the okay days and the "blah" days. If I decided forever and always how I feel about spinach based on my experience at age 5, I'd have missed out.
No joke, I am very much in love with the Bible, and even more so with the God I encounter there. But I have "blah" days. God doesn't owe me a blockbuster Marvel movie every time I open up my Bible. What matters is I take the time anyway, and believe me, as I continue to do this, the "blah" days are fewer and further between now.
So I'm going to go read Psalm 139 now, because I love it and I need it. Hope your day is good.
Prayer: God, thanks for your word, all the time. thank you for being so good to me, all the time. Thank your for my good days, my okay days and even my "blah" days. Amen.
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