Just in front of our house is a fruit tree designed not to yield real fruit.  It blossoms beautifully in the spring, but only puts out a stunted crop.  Less mess, I suppose.

But the squirrels love the marble-sized pears.  (I guess they're pears.  Hard to tell.)  The squirrels return, day after day to feed on them.  And since the tree is directly in front of my studio windows, and since I have a zoom lens that goes woefully underused, I have enjoyed grabbing details shots of the furry feasters.

I should mention, I’m not a fan of the bushy-tailed tree rats.  Back when we lived in a Victorian house in an urban neighborhood, we had a family of them gnaw their way into our house.  They would wake us up, scampering across our bedroom ceiling in the space between the floors.  It took months of careful live-trapping (giving them more compassion than they deserved) to find them another place to live.

So I know this about them: they are relentless.  And now that they don’t live in my house, I can admire their tenacity and focus.  I keep thinking that they must have picked clean this tree.  But they come back over and over to find more to eat.

As I start a new year, I want the same relentless hunger for God’s word.  Having been a Christian my whole adult life, I wrestle sometimes with how familiar much of Scripture feels.  And yet, it is my soul’s true food.

David says,

            How sweet are your words to my taste,
                  sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

I want that kind of delight in the words of the Bible. 

Jonathan Edwards, the 18^th century American preacher, wrote about his unyielding desire to feast on God’s word.

“(I am) Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.”
                                                                             ― Jonathan Edwards

But he was not simply after head-knowledge.  Too often, I find myself simply trying to uncover new information – something I hadn’t read before.  That was not Edwards’ goal.  He understood that to know God, he must know His word.  And knowing God is the only way to become like Him.

In another place, he wrote about his “hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness.”  He said, “There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.”

And so, like these persistent squirrels, I will make it my business to feast.  My commentary on the book of Isaiah arrived this week, and I’m eager to dig in.  I’m sure it will color the coming months of my writing in this column.

After all, who wants to feast alone?

Lord, we love that you speak to us through your word.  Forgive us for our frequently lukewarm response to it, our assumption that we have gleaned all its fruit.  Uncover our souls’ hunger for the feast that you offer.

Reader:  What portion of Scripture are you excited about studying this year?

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