Fake Food

It almost looks like a yummy breakfast, but it’s rocks, polished to look like the real thing. The “rock food” display is an annual favorite in the hobby building of our county fair—courtesy rock and mineral hobbyists. This year, seeing the display reminded me of another physically impossible “eating”—that given in Jeremiah 15:16: “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD Almighty.” This verse, from Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet, was one of the first scriptures I memorized as a new Christian. But I had to think a while about what “eating God’s words” was all about.

 Similar ideas appear elsewhere in the Bible. Manna, the miracle food that fell like dew for 40 years in the wilderness, is often referred to in spiritual terms. Joshua was probably thinking of that when he told the Israelites on the verge of entering the Promised Land, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth”  (Joshua 1:8). In other words, the scriptures available to them at that time were to be a daily intake, as manna was in the desert.  Psalm 119:103 continues the analogy: “How sweet are your promises to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” Another prophet, Ezekiel (who came  long after Jeremiah) literally ate a scroll, which he found “as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 3:1-3).

But here’s the truth: not everybody finds God’s word “sweet as honey.” Their relationship with God is not deep enough or growing enough to find delight in God’s Word.  They may say, “Yes, I have a Bible, I even take it to church. Sure, I don’t read much during the week.  Life gets busy, you know. I know enough verses to get the essentials of it.” That’s about on par with licking petrified rocks.  Eventually you starve.

Another way of looking at “eating” God’s word is tucked away in Psalm 1. First, the psalmist commends the man who says “no” to the world’s way of doing life.  Instead, he delights in God’s word, “and on his law he meditates day and night.”  The idea is not that he gives up on sleep, but that he lives in constant desire and pleasure of God-awareness through studying the Bible.  A step deeper on the key word, “meditate”: the Hebrew word, hagah, means “to mediate, moan, growl, utter, speak.”  It’s an onomatopoetic term—in other words, it sounds like somebody groaning or sighing as the ancients used to do. It’s deep thinking that comes out through the throat and tongue. We don’t need any particular posture to hagah, just a desire to yield fully to God. When we read scripture, it’s not to check off so many chapters or verses a day. It’s to read thoughtfully, seeking a message that’s God-tailored for us.

A vibrant Christian walk is incompatible with spiritual malnutrition.  Or, as Francis Chan wrote in Crazy Love: “Lukewarm living and claiming Christ’s name simultaneously is utterly disgusting to God” (p. 103). No licking “rocks.” Instead, seeking Christ, the Bread of Life. 

The new year is always a good time for a spiritual re-evaluation.  If you sense God challenging you to move deeper with Him, that's worth a hagah.

Early-morning groans

Morning is the great human dividing line. We’re either roosters or slugs (or somewhere between). Aging has shifted me toward the “slug” side, although some mornings I wake up before the roosters and decide to keep going anyway.

That’s what happened the other morning. I eased into my favorite chair, turned on the heating pad for my back (doc says I have arthritis there, oh joy), and opened my Bible to read Psalms 5. Long ago I’d memorized Psalms 5:3 in the King James Version: “My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.”

Well, we got the “in the morning” right, like 5 a.m.! As I re-read this psalm, my memory replayed the Maranatha scripture praise song of the 1970s based on it that began, “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider thou my meditation.”

Meditation? Just what did the psalmist mean by that? Today we hear “meditation” a lot in connection with Eastern religions, even though the Biblical sense of it is ruminating on scripture, like a cow with its cud. I stopped to explore the word.

Other Bible versions render that word: “groaning” (NAS); “sighing” (Holman); “lament” (Today’s NIV, 2005); “sighing and groaning” (Amplified); “ramblings, groans and sighs” (The Message).

Vine’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible said the word in Hebrew, hagah, means “to meditate, moan, growl, utter, speak.” The author added: “This word means to think about something in earnest, often with the focus on thinking about future plans and contingencies, possibly speaking to God or oneself in low tones.” He added that hagah is an onomatopoetic (“sounds like”) term, reflecting how people of ancient times sighed or made low sounds while musing. By the way, hagah also expresses a lion’s growl (Isaiah 31:4) and a dove’s “coo” (Isaiah 38:14).

I’m not one of the “ancients,” but I can understand hagah. After reading my Bible, I open up my prayer notebook. I often groan over the names on its pages. Some are battling cancer or other serious diseases. I pray for women seared by a spouse’s rejection. Others have baffling and troubling needs, like being “stuck” in life. Still others refuse to see their need for Christ. Sometimes I can only say a name then wait in silence as I ponder the mind of God on this person’s behalf. At such times I cherish the promise of Romans 8:26, that when we’re unsure how to pray, “the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” He gets the prayers, even our groanings, through.

By 6 a.m. the sun had risen, a fitting metaphor for the light that a brief word study had cast for me upon this particular verse. I’ve now written “Heb: hagah=groaning, sighing” in the margin of my Bible to remind me that the word translated there means more than the King James Version rendering of “meditation.” “Groaning, sighing” also fits the message of the psalm, which wrestles with the pain of living among arrogant and evil people.

What comfort to know that God doesn’t expect me to pray eloquently-worded prayers. Sometimes I just groan, and He understands.