When We Eat God's Word

Day 353: Revelation 10:1-11

“I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.” - Revelation 10:10 NIV

To start today's post, it is fitting to share Eugene Peterson's quote (from “Eat This Book”):

“The reading that John is experiencing is not of the kind that equips us to pass an examination. Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives. Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized. Most of us have opinions about God that we are not hesitant to voice. But just because a conversation (or sermon or lecture) has the word ‘God’ in it, does not qualify it as true. The angel does not instruct St. John to pass on information about God; he commands him to assimilate the word of God so that when he does speak, it will express itself artlessly in his syntax just as the food we eat, when we are healthy, is unconsciously assimilated into our nerves and muscles and put to work in speech and action."

This book that John eats is at first sweet and then turns sour. God is calling back to Jeremiah 15:16 and Ezekiel 3:1-3 (they were also commanded to eat Scripture). In those messages, the prophets were not given an easy task. They had to communicate the ins and outs of God's judgment to Israel.

Though God's word satisfies the deepest longing of our hearts to be loved (it is sweet), it also confronts us in our darkness and won't be content with seeing us languish in our sins.

Every time we choose to open our Bibles to read, study, meditate, and apply, we know that Jesus will not leave us where He found us. He loves us too much to do that. There is no other meal on earth that can offer this kind of experience.

You are loved. Still, there are changes that must take place.