A common refrain of our day and age is: "I'm so busy!"  Can you relate?  We are all busy, but are we 'busy' with the Word of God?  Eugene Patterson, translator of the MESSAGE version of the Bible, released a new book this year entitled, Eat This Book.  In this book, he challenges us to 'get busy' with the Word of God like we never have before.  Part of the impetus for this challenge comes from a portion of Isaiah 31:4 - as a lion growls, a great lion over his prey.  The Hebrew word for 'growl' is hagah.  Usually translated as 'meditate', this definition doesn't truly plumb the depths of the meaning of hagah.  A better way to think of this word is to envision a dog stumbling across a savory bone.  Anyone who has been around dogs knows the ensuing routine:  the prance, a gambol, the proud tail wag - as the dog takes his new find to a private place and goes to work - salivating, gnawing, turning it over, licking it inside and out, unhurriedly lingering, softly growling throaty sounds of pleasure.  It is a scene of utter enjoyment.

 

With this understanding, Hebrew scholars and rabbis used the same word hagah - to describe the kind of reading of the Word of God that is intended to reach to your soul.  'Meditate' was far too tame a translation for what was to be a teeth-tongue-and-stomach involving whole-body experience - tasting, mediating and savoring the sweet, mouth-watering, soul-energizing morsels of the Word of God.  (Psalm 34:8 - Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good).  The spirit of hagah was intended to describe one 'lost in his religion' - just as the lion was 'lost' in his prey and the dog was 'lost' in his bone.

 

My personal theme Scripture for 2008 has been Psalm 1:2 - Instead you thrill to God's Word, you chew on Scripture day and night (MSG).  My goal this year has been to let the word of God slowly dissolve into my soul like a lozenge melting in my mouth.  It has taken sacrifice - as sometimes it's has been easier to sleep in or stay up late watching one more re-run of a CSI episode.  Yet as I have pushed through and drawn nearer to God and his Word, I have found that I have been more motivated to engage in the spiritual battle and been more resolute in my faith.

The call for all us as disciples is to thrill to God's Word in the spirit of 'hagah'.  This is especially important because we live in a world where philosophically you can believe anything (so long as you do not claim it to be true), morally you can practice anything (so long as you do not claim it's a 'better' way), and religiously you can hold to anything (so long as you do not bring Christ into it).  In this dangerous climate where we can be crushed under the weight of forces opposed to the Gospel of Christ, it is imperative that we be lost in our religion as we hagah - or chew on the soul-energizing morsels of the Word of God.