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The 3rd Sunday in Lent: The Word of God

On this, the third Sunday of Lent, I wanted to share something about The Word of God.

I love God's word...have ever since discovering it around age 20.  I grew up around it for certain.  Heard it spoken, and even read some of it during various "religious" times.  But I never knew the beauty and the joy of reading the word of God for myself until I gave my life to Christ at age 20.  
Within a year I read the Bible exhaustively and underlined, drew arrows, made notes in the sides, on the top, in the bottom...it was a thrilling time of discovery.

A few years later in Seminary, preparing for ministry, I had a Professor named Dr. Aubrey Martin.  Dr. Martin was blind, had been that way since around age 10.  Yet he was one of the best teachers I had.  Remarkably he had memorized all of the New Testament and about 95% of the Old Testament also.  That's right...Memorized it.  If we asked him about a verse he would quote it verbatim, and then add four or five more references to make his point.  Dr. Martin demonstrated to me that God's word was meant to LIVE inside of us, not just be something we use as a weapon to make a point.

I studied Church History and fell in love with the early church fathers.  Reading some of the earlier blogs you probably already realized this.  One of those "fathers" of the church was the brillant Augustine.  Like me, he had come to Christ as an adult, and like me, he had dove into the faith with all that he had.  Not like me, he was a brillant theologian, pastor and leader.  What is so amazing about him was his ability to live the word "out-loud"...to make it his own, real, personal...part of everyday life.

Here's an excerpt from Augustine's confession on his love for the Word of God.  Enjoy it, as you would a great meal:

I love you, Lord, not doubtingly, but with absolute certainty. Your Word beat upon my heart until I fell in love with you, and now the universe and everything in it tells me to love you, and tells the same thing to us all, so that we are without excuse. 

And what do I love when I love you? Not physical beauty, or the grandeur of our existence in time, or the radiance of light that pleases the eye, or the sweet melody of old familiar songs, or the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices, or the taste of manna or honey, or the arms we like to use to clasp each other. None of these do I love when I love my God. Yet there is a kind of light, and a kind of melody, and a kind of fragrance, and a kind of food, and a kind of embracing, when I love my God. They are the kind of light and sound and odor and food and love that affect the senses of the inner man. There is another dimension of life in which my soul reflects a light that space itself cannot contain. It hears melodies that never fade with time. It inhales lovely scents that are not blown away by the wind. It eats without diminishing or consuming the supply. It never gets separated from the embrace of God and never gets tired of it. That is what I love when I love my God. 

And what is my God? I asked the earth and it replied, “I am not he”; and everything in it said the same thing. I asked the sea ... I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon and stars. They said to me, “Neither are we the God you seek.”  I said to all the sensory objects that cluster around my body and cause it to react, “You speak of God and say you are not he. Then tell me something about him.” And they all cried out with a loud voice, “He made us!” I questioned them by fixing my attention on them, and their beauty was their answer. 

Then I turned to myself and said, “Who are you?” And I replied, “A man.” But in me are present both body and soul, one exterior, the other interior. Which should I impress to help me find my God? With my physical apparatus I had already searched for him from earth to sky, as far as the eye could see. But the interior equipment is better. The messengers of my body delivered to it the answer of heaven and earth and everything in them when they told me, “We are not God,” and “He made us.”  The inner man knows these things by means of the ministering of the outer man. The inner “I” knows them; I, the soul, know them through the senses of the body. So I asked the whole frame of the universe about God and it answered back, “I am not he, but he made me.” 

The truth is, there is one mediator whom you in your hidden mercy have revealed to the meek and lowly, and have sent as an example of humility to be followed. That is the mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who has appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One. As men are, he was mortal; as God is, he was just. And because righteousness issues in life and peace, he, through his righteousness with God, nullified the death of justified sinners by sharing their lot with them.... 

How much you loved us, Good Father, who spared not your own Son but gave him up for us sinners! How much you loved us, since it was on our behalf that he, who thought it no robbery to be equal with you, submitted himself to the death of the cross. He alone was free among the dead because he was free to lay down his life to take it again. For us he was both victor and victim, or should I say, victor because victim.... By being born your Son, and then becoming a slave to serve us, he made us to become your sons. 

So I have good reason for my strong hope in him who sits at your right hand and makes intercession for us. If I didn't have that hope I would be desperate. But I believe that in him you heal all my weaknesses, and they are many and great ... but your medicine is even greater. It would be easy to think that your Word is too remote for any communication with man. It would be easy to despair, had not the Word become flesh to dwell in our midst.

[This excerpt from the Confessions of Saint Augustine was translated by Sherwood Eliot Wirth, Love Song, Harper & Row, New York, 1971, p. 124-128]


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