The Word of God and The Comedy of Errors

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Joshua 1:7–9 (NIV) “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” CONSIDER My children are turning out to be my best teachers. With each passing day I realize just how much I haven’t yet learned. One day, Sam was working on learning a passage of Scripture for one of his classes in school. I noticed him writing it out on a page. He said, “Dad, writing the verse out one time is the equivalent of saying it eleven times.” Who knew? I call this practice “scribing,” and it’s something I try to do with God’s Word at least every week. You see, God’s Word is a consuming word. It is a totalizing, comprehensive script of absolute wisdom for our whole lives. “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.” Strength in the Lord and the courage to follow him come from depth in his Word and Spirit. Look at the progression here: 1. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; 2. Meditate on it day and night; and 3. Be careful to do it. Most people try to start with number three, fail miserably, and go back to their mediocre comedy-of-errors life. You don’t begin with doing it. Frankly, you don’t even begin with reading it. You begin with a desire to be strong in the Lord and courageous in following him. Back to Sam. Back in high school, he had one of the leads in his school play. It was Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. For three months Sam carried a book around everywhere he went. Yep, it was the script. It was bent out of shape—cover permanently peeled back and pages tattered, underlined, highlighted, dog-eared, and otherwise trashed. I saw that book everywhere—at the foot of his bed in the morning before he woke, in the car on the way to basketball practice, in the waiting room at the orthodontist, on the couch next to the television remote control. You get the point. But here’s the kicker. Sam was not memorizing lines. He was learning a character. He was immersing himself in a plot and narrative. He was becoming a player in the story. He was being careful to do everything written in it. The Word of God is our script. That’s why we call it Script-ure. We are not just memorizing lines. We are learning a character—Jesus. We are immersing ourselves in a plot and narrative. We are becoming players in the story. When we get our eye off of that ball, we so easily slip into a comedy of errors. So we are beginning to get the picture of rememberize, research, and rehearse, aren’t we?  One more thing. The exhortation to courage leads to the invitation to wisdom, a.k.a. the Word of God. Seems like there's a song in there. "Grant us wisdom. Grant us courage, for the facing of this hour." And isn't there an old Shakespearean saying about wisdom being the better part of valor? I think we've got our hymn for the day.  PRAY Father, thank you for your Word and for your Spirit who inspired it and who causes it to become living and active in our lives. We want this word to be always on our lips. We want to meditate on it day and night. We want to be careful to do it. But we know that is not really enough. We want to become like Jesus—his character, his mind, his heart, his love. We want to be strong and very courageous like Joshua, Jesus, Sarah, and Mary. Come, Holy Spirit, and usher us deeper into the Script that we might become more and more alive in the unfolding story. In Jesus’s name, amen. JOURNAL What’s the story of your own comedy of errors when it comes to the Word of God? Is it legalism? Laziness? Adventures in missing the point? Lackadaisical, lackluster interest? Be strong and very courageous, friends. SING Today, we will sing "God of Grace and God of Glory" (hymn 45) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer's Praise.