Famished and Full

The man displayed the patience of Job as his three-year old daughter read “The Cat in the Hat” from cover to cover, just to start it over again and again.  This went on the entire commute to the office, while walking into the office, while conducting business at the office and all the way home.   He smiled at her, encouraged her, and cheered her on as she had finally learned how to read.   

It was that day in sunny San Diego that I developed my passion for reading.   As a young girl, the highlight of my week was going to the library.   I devoured every book I could get my hands on, from mystery novels to cheesy romances to the classics.   My mom had to limit my weekly checkout count to 20, and it was not uncommon for me to finish all 20 books in the first 4 days of the week, leaving me anxious for the next trip to the library.   

I was 10 when I first read the thousand pages of Gone With the Wind, often staying up all night and being found huddled next to my lamp, eyes glued to the pages when my dad woke up for work the next morning, much to his chagrin.   I was the “nerd” who loved school, everything about learning, studying, and reading.   I even liked homework (most of the time), and would check out Algebra books from the library during the summer to work on the problems.   

When I was in college, I always took the most classes I could take, even auditing a couple, just so that I could get the information being presented.   After graduating, I moved to Phoenix, where I enrolled in a Bible college associated with my church, quickly earning another couple of degrees.   My personal library continued to grow, through book clubs, book stores, book tables at conferences.   I just could never get enough.

As a young professional, I started building my business leadership library, often reading and recommending books to my colleagues and managers.    One of those books was called “Strengths Finder 2.0”, a book that helps you to discover what your personal strengths are, and how to utilize them in your career.   I’m sure you will not be surprised to discover that one of my top strengths is “Learner”, one who is passionate about learning, reading, growing in knowledge.  

It’s no wonder that one of the first items on my to-do list when moving to a new town is to get a library card.  My heart still skips a beat when I visit the library.   I walk down each and every aisle, touching the books, lamenting that there is just not enough time to read every book and learn everything that is contained within the pages.   While I do have an e-Reader as well with hundreds of unread books loaded on it, it just cannot compare to the smell of an old book, the feel of pages turning in my hands, and the joy (and sorrow) of coming to the end of a riveting story.

With all this passion for knowledge and reading, you might think that studying the Bible has come naturally to me, but you would be sadly mistaken.   Growing up, I read through the Bible almost every year as part of church contests and programs, but it was a checklist.   There were stories that I had heard in Sunday School, and then there were the parts that I just could not understand (Ezekiel, anyone?).   Reading the Bible was always just something that “good Christians” did, so I tried to read it regularly.  There were seasons where it was dry and of minimal priority as I was “busy” doing other things, and other seasons where it felt alive and I didn’t mind it as much.   But when I would hear about men and women who loved the Word, and passionately devoured it, I couldn’t comprehend what that really meant.   Oh, I loved participating in Bible Studies, getting into the Greek and Hebrew, but for my own personal study, I fought with the “want to”.   I 

really wanted to want to, and I would read because I needed to, but it still felt forced.  

And then everything changed.   A few months ago, my husband and I left the comfort of a rich home church, an environment where everyone basically believed in the Lord, and spiritual nourishment was as abundant as an all-you-can-eat buffet, and we moved to one of the most un-churched cities in the most atheistic state in America.   We went from buffet to virtual famine in the blink of an eye, where even those who are in church appear to be just barely surviving.    I went from having nutrient rich food handed to me, to becoming a hunter for anything remotely edible, and suddenly I started to understand what it meant to be spiritually famished.

Every sermon challenged everything I had ever heard and believed in.  Neighbors began challenging my theology.  I was overwhelmed with questions without answers, and I was hungry for hope.   I had to know who Jesus really is, who His Father is, who the Holy Spirit is; I had to know what salvation really means; I had to find out what He had to say about x, y, z, and what how to apply that to my life here and now.    I started reading Matthew, and I couldn’t stop.   Then I started seeing how it correlated with Romans, and Psalms, and how there is so much depth interwoven between each chapter.  I started sneaking my phone under my blanket at 1am, and reading through entire books of the Bible in different versions.  I wake up and I can’t wait to read and study more to discover the riches of every word, and I am finding myself disappointed when I have to put it down for silly things like making dinner or doing laundry.

The more I read, the more I find that I don’t know, and I want to know everything (remember, I’m a Learner).   I still get frustrated when there are things I don’t understand (which happens at least 2-3 times a day), and I get frustrated that some of the resources to help us understand are themselves difficult to understand.   But, it makes me go deeper.   It has become like a treasure hunt, and instead of being satisfied with the gold flake on top of the mountain, I have to keep digging and digging and digging.   It’s here that I have discovered that there is so much more than just “gold” in these mountains, there are diamonds, rubies, sapphires and gems of every variety.  

More than anything, I have discovered that God has so much that He wants to tell us, that He is waiting to show us, if we will be still and dig in to His love letter to us.   I am learning that it’s not a sprint, but a leisurely stroll as with a friend on the beach, stopping to pick up seashells, driftwood and pretty rocks.   It’s okay to be “stuck” on just a couple verses, meditating on them, studying them, digging in to them, to hear what He has to say.   It’s actually more than “okay”, it’s where hunger is both ignited and satiated at the same time.  And this is exactly the place He loves to meet us, this place where we are both famished and full.