How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! —Psalm 119:103 (NRSV)
I’m a big fan of the Bible. It offers such reassuring promises, such straightforward—but never pat—answers to our most challenging questions.
As a writing teacher, I especially love the Bible’s literariness. How recognizable the characters are, how gripping its stories! Unlike some faith-related writing, it is never sugary or trite. Like all great art, it perpetually surprises.
Consider the description of manna, which resembled frost, coriander seeds and resin—three substances nothing alike!—and tasted like “wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31, NRSV). So delightful sounding, yet the Israelites craved what they’d eaten as slaves. The Hebrew word manna itself thrills me, meaning not bread or food, as one might expect, but something like “What the heck is this crud?”
I love even the Bible’s tough parts. In one disturbing story, Jephthah, an Old Testament warrior and judge highly praised in the New Testament, vows—in a murderous fit of hubris—to sacrifice as a burned offering “whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious” (Judges 11:31, NRSV). His daughter emerges to welcome him “with timbrels and with dancing” (Judges 11:34, NRSV). Scholars disagree about whether Jephthah actually killed his daughter, although the text seems heartbreakingly clear to me.
Moses commands the Israelites to talk about Scripture “when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7, NRSV). Surely this is a believer’s most delightful assignment.
Father, thank You for the remarkable book of Your relationship with us. Inspire me truly enjoy it and make it part of my daily conversation.
