Longing for the Word

"My soul breaks with longing for Your judgments at all times." ~Psalm 119:20

I've been meditating a lot on what it means to long for God's commands to the point of breaking.

This past weekend, I was enjoying a good book, and I mean a really good book. I would describe my desire to read that book as longing, sometimes even wanting to bust when I couldn't read it. I took it everywhere: in the car, walking around, in my bed, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, everywhere! Me and that book were inseparable. And I read it everywhere we went: in the car, in the bathroom, and while getting changed, eating, combing my hair, etc. Sometimes when we walked around Niagara Falls (that's where I was this past weekend), I would start reading my book whenever they stopped for a minute or more to look at something. No spare moment was wasted; I read as much as possible. When my parent's wouldn't let me bring the book into the restaurants, stay up late reading it, or turn the car lights on to glance over another page or two, I sometimes became grumpy or even (I am sad to admit) disrespectful. I enjoyed that book so much. It was the first thing I read in the morning and the last at night.

The Lord allowed all this to happen so that I might have a powerful and very vivid picture of how we as Christians should treat the Word of God. All of us could agree that God's Word is a hundred times more valuable than that book, but do we really treat it that way?

A soul that breaks with longing for the Scriptures spends every moment of his free time in it. He abandons all else in its pursuit. He takes God's Word with him wherever he goes. It is laying beside his computer, where he reads a chapter or paragraph while waiting for a class to begin or a friend to respond or a file to load. He takes it with him in the car, and lays it beside his bed at night. A day spent without a good portion for time spent in the Word is an unsuccessful day, in his mind. He constantly wants to be in the Word. When he goes even an hour without drinking from the springs of living water, he is drawn again to the springs as a deep pants for the water brooks. God's Word is his one consuming thought, and its praises are always on his lips. This young man truly longs for God's Word with every bone in his body.

What about you and I? Do we long for the Word of God? Do we treat it as more valuable than any other possession?