Thy words were found and I ate them

Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. Jeremiah 15:16

I took a five day fast.

A five day fast from books.

It was quite the achievement on my part, if I may say so. Getting away with my love on her birthday weekend, and not taking along a single book. Not one. (Only took me 30 years to learn that.)Three days, two nights. 46 hours, 33 minutes and 27 seconds. Actually, I have no idea the exact breakdown. Just call it 48 hours or so. And upon our return we immediately joined a Superbowl gathering hosted by one of the small groups we belong to (the fabulous FNG).

Still no books. No words. No reading.

Home late, early morning rising to prep for an endoscopy and sigmoidoscopy (my 32 year annual act of penance for my many, many sins).

Still no reading.

My love dropped me off early for the procedure. I had packed three books (typical overkill in this department for me) but ended up having to check in at another door on the far side of the hospital. By the time I got there and checked in, I had barely the time to sit down before they came for me. Back across the campus we walked to a waiting room. No sooner had I sat down (again) than they came for me. “No time to lose,” was the word. Shuttled down the hall to an exam room where I changed into that special hospital garb so many of us know and cherish. The place was packed, time was short, my physician would be there in the next thirty minutes, so all was in high gear as they regathered my info along with needed initials and signatures, stuck me for an IV (thankfully just once), strapped an oxygen hose around my face, and then rejoiced that all was done and ready when the doctor walked in.

No reading. No words on printed page. Only ceiling tiles and a large clock ticking the wordless moments away. Sedation administered. Dim memories of intense gagging followed by slightly more lucid images of my wife helping me get dressed, of me being wheeled out to the car, talk of snow (surely that couldn’t have been right!), of pulling in the drive way at home and insisting I could walk unaided.

And I slept.

Turns out they had administered three doses of sedation and yet another substance on top of that to finally get the scope down my throat (it was the semi-truck version of the scope, able to look sideways as well as straight ahead – I don’t even like to think about what they used for the other end; I just hope it was at least a different scope). “He’ll be alright after he sleeps for a day…well, yeah, after a day,” says the nurse.

Wiped out. Surfaced to some basil tomato soup, tried to watch a movie (reading out of the question). I realized my mind was making up its own scenes for the film. Too weird. Out again for hours. Dinner. An attempt at watching an episode of Law and Order and there was no order to it at all. Out again until 2AM. I get up, shower, think, “My books!” But the shower doesn’t remove the foggy film from my brain. Back to sleep. Tuesday morning. Get up in time to go to work. I feel my brain crashing – how long, O Lord, how long!? I head back home. Sleep three hours. Lunch. Feeling more lucid, but daughter to shuttle, some work to attempt. Home in time for group. Sleep through it.

No books. No reading. Five days. Felt like five months.

This morning I wake and glory hallelujah the fog has lifted. I see clear. I shower, and I sit. Greek Bible. 2 Corinthians. Paul’s emotionally-laden, passionately-filled, Spirit-unctioned words pour into me as the very nectar of heaven. Each word a flood of delight. The poetic rhythms of the Greek, the flow of his mind, his very bowels, opening wide (thankfully no scope required), inviting mine to return the gesture – and receiving it. For an hour and a half I read through the entire book. I’m trying to remember when the Word was so delicious, so precious.

Thy words were found, and I did eat them.

I’ve analyzed and diagrammed and inductively broken down and reassembled 2 Corinthians more times than I can count, and always found blessing in that. But oh the pure, untainted, virgin delight of those wonderful 90 minutes I found in simply eating those words. Rolling them over and around my tongue, ingesting line after line, hearing the beating of Paul’s heart, in its rhythms feeling His.

And thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.

Perhaps it just takes a few days of chosen and/or enforced word fasting to fully appreciate the feasting on those words, to be blessed anew with what it feels like to have your soul nourished and filled to overflowing through what He speaks. I could have gone to a scholar’s conference that weekend, but chose to fast from words and feast on and with my love. And rather than being sated with the offerings of others’ feasting, I found, quite unexpectantly, at the end of my fast, one of the most memorable, personal feasts of all.

Lord, let your words be found again…

The Seven in Eleven Challenge

A new challenge for the new year.


For the first two decades or so of my walk with Jesus I read the Bible intensively – the Old Testament several times a year, the New Testament on average once every two months or so. The last ten years it’s seemed time to slow down a bit and do some savoring, which has been wonderful.

But this week it hit me just how refreshing it would be to aim for mulitiple readings of the New Testament again – in fact, to read it through cover to cover seven times in 2011.

Want to join me?

Here are the facts: there are 260 chapters in the New Testament, 7956 verses (depending on who’s doing the counting and which translation we’re talking about) and 138,020 words. But break it down. To read the New Testament through seven times in ’11 will translate into reading on average five chapters a day. At this rate you will finish each read through in just over a month and a half and averaging about 30-45 minutes a day; I imagine I will miss some days entirely, and on other days I’ll read whole books in one sitting just because I can – and that’s the best way to read them anyway. The purpose of this kind of reading is grasping a more panoramic view rather than in depth studies – but plenty will pop as you go along.

And how about taking that panoramic view from several different angles – mix it up and choose a different translation for each read through.

I think my reading menu will be:

1. Greek New Testament (UBS text)

2. ESV

3. Message

4. KJV

5. Da Jesus Book

6. The Jewish New Testament

7. Greek New Testament (Majority text)

Make up your own menu – and if seven times sounds too ambitious (or not ambitious enough), do your own calculations and set your own goal. But whatever you end up doing, how about we all as radical followers of Christ make the commitment to do our part personally to stamp out biblical illiteracy and be avid readers of the Book this year? Savor each Jesus metaphor and story and parable as it passes; adventure with Luke through Acts, look over Paul’s shoulder in the epistles, ask John “Sir, just what are you on?” when you get to Revelation; watch for each glimpse of Him and the Way. And even as you pass over it at high altitude and at higher speeds, watch for those times when he calls you to take a flying leap of radical life change and application.

Let the Word make a fresh impression on your mind.

Read this year. Come on.

And let it – Him – shape your heart and soul as you do.

Are you game?