December 12 - Revelation 10: Sweet & Sour

I went up to the Angel and said, "Give me the little book." He said, "Take it, then eat it. It will taste sweet like honey but turn sour in your stomach." I took the little book from the Angel's hand and it was sweet honey in my mouth, but when I swallowed, my stomach curdled. (10:9-10)

This picture of John eating the Word of God and assimilating it into his very being is a relevant one to me. The past two years of diving deeply into the Word and applying it to my daily experiences has been amazing. But I feel like I'm having more of those stomach-curdling experiences with the Word these days as God corrects and refines and chisels off my very rough edges.

As I read the Bible, I am in awe of who God is and marvel at how He has revealed Himself to us. Yet I'm also saddened and repulsed by the sin and brokenness so evident in me. It's deep-seated, and it's ugly. God has been gently but persistently convicting me of ungodly patterns and tendencies, and it's humbling to say the least. Yes, immersing myself in God's Word has definitely been a sweet and sour experience.

"For most of us, our first experience with the Bible is sweet; we find ourselves in this book, and that is so wonderful. We acquire a taste for the promises and blessings of God, we learn to appreciate the sound counsel and direction for our lives, we memorize a few psalms that we can recite in dark and lonely times and find comfort... 

"But sooner or later, we find that not everything is to our liking in this book. It starts out sweet to our taste; and then we find that it doesn't sit well with us at all; it becomes bitter in our stomachs. Finding ourselves in this book is most pleasant, flattering even; and then we find that the book is not written to flatter us, but to involve us in a reality, God's reality, that doesn't cater to our fantasies of ourselves. 

"There are hard things in this book, hard things to hear, hard things to obey. There are words in this book are difficult to digest...But it's not just the hard sayings, it is the way the Bible comes to us. There are moments when it strikes us as totally strange, impossible to fit into our scheme of thinking and living. We try our best to domesticate this revelation, to fit it into our version of the way we would like things to be. Far too much of our so-called study of the Bible is an attempt to come up with explanations or programs that fit the Holy Trinity into our Holy Needs, Holy Wants, and Holy Feelings. 

"Every careful reader of the Bible is struck by how "recurringly odd and unaccommodating" it is to what we are used to and expect. The Bible is "no easy read." 

"You can't reduce this book to what you can handle; you can't domesticate this book to what you are comfortable with. You can't make it your toy poodle, trained to respond to your commands. 

"This book makes us participants in the world of God's being and action; but we don't participate on our own terms. We don't get to make up the plot or decide what character we will be. This book had generative power; things happen to us as we let the text call forth, stimulate, rebuke, prune us. We don't end up the same. 

Eat this book, but also have a well-stocked cupboard of Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol on hand." Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book