In continuing my study in the book of Hebrews I have found myself hungering for more. I keep partaking of this Word and I’m finding myself yet still hungry. Have you ever eaten such a delicious meal that even when you are full you just can’t stop eating it? It’s like your stomach cannot contain anymore but your taste buds are watering at the remembrance of every bite, every taste, and every flavor. That is how I have been feeling about this book. At first, I just read it and it doesn’t always hit me with such power of intensity. Then I read it again in a different translation. Then I begin to study the different commentaries that explain the context of the said chapter. It translates me back to that era understanding why those things were stated and what the author meant by them. We have to remember that originally this book, the Bible, was not written in English. It was written in both Hebrew and Greek, and upon translation into an English language, we must dig deep to know the actual meaning behind certain words and phrases. I look back to a time when my understanding of the bible was ‘open it and read it’ and not really understand half of what it said or how it was supposed to pertain to me. I cannot imagine doing that now when I know HOW to study the scripture. How can you truly partake of the richness of the meat when you do not even have an understanding of the meat itself? It’s like a connoisseur of wine or coffee or food or dessert, someone who has studied the origin of something. Someone who has taken an interest, turned it into a passion, and really grasps the fullness of that thing and then compares them to a person trying it for the first time with no prior history or understanding of it. How can they fully appreciate all that is represents, all that makes it so exceptional, if they have no TRUE understanding of it? Do I make sense at all? Well why should it be any different for a Bible, a compilation of words, revelations, and prophecies, something that was written over the course of thousands of years? So many people take things out of context when they spout off a scripture. I mean did you look to see when it was written, what era, what was happening at that time that would have caused the author to say something? At first mention, this seems too tedious a task. I mean who would be drawn to read such a material with so much effort needing to go into it? At first for me, I felt this way. Ugh…I already don’t understand most of this Bible and now I have a whole process I need to go through in order to understand it! Turn off right? WRONG! Well, ok at first it was, but now it’s like breathing. I cannot just read it without digging in to know why or finding the meaning behind words I don’t know. How can this be for me, I must know. “O taste and see that the LORD is good...” (Psalms 34:8). The bible is like a great mystery full of many secret passageways that need unlocking. It’s like a video game with many levels that even if you have played the full game and completed it (or read the entire bible), there are things that you missed or did not unlock because maybe you needed a certain amount of points or needed to unlock something else before you could even know about it. Why do you think games have “cheat codes”? Lol! I played a game on the xbox360 where I had defeated it 4x, but I still was unable to unlock everything. Every time I went back in from the very beginning I discovered more, happened upon something I hadn’t seen in prior times, gained new powers, opened up a secret door by accident that was hidden, stuff like that. The bible is just like that. The cool thing is the unlocking is endless because God is too vast for our mere human minds to fully comprehend. God wants to show us all of it…how much do we want to dig? How deep do we want to go? How much of ourselves are we willing to invest into this Bible? All you can do is start. I mean you can’t begin any other way than to just start. Where you go from there is up to you. I can guarantee you one thing though…the deeper you press in…the deeper you will go and the more your desire will grow.
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
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