I don’t have much
to say about Costa Rica, other than the fact that I come home in less than two
weeks! I’ve never been this excited and sad at the same time, but I’m preparing
myself for coming back to the States and seeing everyone and starting college
in less than 4 months. Wow, THAT’S terrifying.
Now for the
point of this blog post… For the past 10 days or so, I’ve been really intrigued
by Greek and Hebrew word studies in the Bible. If I'm being honest, the
MacArthur Bible Commentary and Zondervan NIV Exhaustive Concordance have been
my closest companions (along with a couple of my GAP friends who have been patiently
listening to me bask in the meanings of words in different contexts; thank you
very much). To give you an idea of how excited I am, I’m using more than one
pop-out color in this post, which makes it the only one, which is a big
deal.
About a month
ago I noticed that I had been feeling withdrawn from a relationship with God. I
hadn’t been feeling too different, but I just wasn’t
growing or moving anywhere. I was waiting on God to show me or tell me
something, ANYTHING, that I could do. And when nothing was happening, I decided
I’d just read whatever I came across and hope it motivated me. So about three
and a half weeks I went behind the other girls rooms and opened up a Bible that
I just got. Our Bible teacher’s wife left a small NLT Bible here for
the students when they moved back to the States. I’ve never had an NLT, but I
claimed it then and gave it a go. So after I got situated and after a few
minutes of flipping through pages trying to choose a book of the Bible, I
decided on Psalms. And I opened to a page with a verse highlighted in blue. I
read:
“Search for the Lord and His
strength, and keep on searching.”
Psalm 105:4 (NLT)
In my few
minutes of reading this little NLT, I realized that the words would probably be
different in my ESV, so I read that version, too, which says:
“Seek the Lord and His strength;
seek His presence continually.”
Psalm 105:4 (ESV)
Hmm... Seek. That
jogged my memory of another verse that I found last summer and loved:
“You will seek me and find me
when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)
I thought
about those verses for about a week and a half, reading and rereading them,
making notecards that said them, seeing how every Spanish and English version
of the Bible worded it, and throughout it all, realizing that I couldn’t be a
sitting duck waiting on God. I had to seek Him. I had to put effort in on my
side, too. Why hadn’t I realized it sooner? I don’t know, but man, I’m glad I
grabbed that little Bible in March and went back to the girls rooms that day a
month later.
Well, I’ve
only used a concordance a few times, once at camp and a little bit here, so I
didn’t know much about using one. I went to the shelf and got the giant
book. It’s bigger than my head and weighs about as much as a small child.
To be honest, it was intimidating just to hold. But I flipped to the word
“seek” and was inundated by 128 appearances of the word. I first skimmed down
to Psalm 104:5. Both times in that verse it comes from the Hebrew bāqaš, which means to
seek, search, look for, call to account, ask for,
inquire about.
Then I scanned
my finger down to Jeremiah 29:13. That’s where I got excited. The first “seek”
is the same Hebrew word, bāqaŝ. But the second
one is different... Number 2011. It’s the word dāraš. It means to seek, inquire, consult, ponder, investigate.
So I tried
reading it like this:
“You will seek, search, look for, call to account, ask, inquire about me and find me when you seek, inquire, consult, ponder, investigate me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13
(ESV)
I can’t be
idle and just expect God to do all the work in this relationship. I have to get
off my seat and dāraš Him with all I’ve got so that I will bāqaŝ Him! I have to
ponder Him. I have to investigate Him. And I have to consult Him. And all that searching will make me look,
ask, and inquire about Him in my daily life.
I don’t know
if you think it’s as exciting as I do, but it got me really pumped up to keep
looking at words. Since then I’ve looked at a lot and learned so much more than
I ever thought I would. When I see a word that might have multiple meanings, I
usually drop everything and get the concordance to look it up before I forget.
I’ve even picked up a little (and I mean very, very, very little) bit of Hebrew
and Greek along the way! If you have a lot of free time and a concordance, I
will warn you of one thing: If you start, it’s hard to stop. There’s so much to
learn from the original meanings of words in the Bible. It’s still blowing my
mind! I love it!
That's all I
got. I didn't try too hard on this post, so sorry for the grammatical
nightmare that it is. If anyone wants to have concordance parties
this summer hit me up. I got no plans.
