My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call insight your intimate friend, to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.
Proverbs 7:1-5
(Proverbs 7:1-5)
Greetings to you in the Name of our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
When Johannes Gutenberg combined the printing press with moveable type in 1450, he ushered in the era of mass communications in the West, spreading learning into new social realms. Literacy increased across the globe and new ideas produced rapid transformations in social and religious contexts. Gutenberg produced the first-ever printed version of the Bible. Prior to this, Bibles were painstakingly hand-copied, taking scribes up to a year to produce.
For centuries since, the printing press has provided people like you and me the privilege of direct access to Scripture. While we also have electronic versions available to us, many of us often hold a physical Bible in our hands because of his invention. What was once inaccessible given the sheer cost and time to have a Bible copied is readily at our fingertips today. Having access to God’s truth is an amazing privilege. The writer of Proverbs indicates we should treat His instructions to us in the Scriptures as something to be cherished, as “the apple of [our] eye” (Proverbs 7:2) and to write His words of wisdom on “the tablet of [our] heart” (v. 3). As we seek to understand the Bible and live according to its wisdom, we, like scribes, are drawing God’s truth from our “fingers” down into our hearts, to be taken with us wherever we go.
First Lutheran Church
Little Rock
Questions to reflect on:
- How has having Scripture stored in your heart benefitted you?
- How can you begin to internalize more of God’s wisdom?
Prayer for the month: Loving God, help me to know Your Word intimately that I might live in the way
You desire. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Your servant and fellow brother in Christ,
Pastor Bacic
- Article adapted from the devotional “Printed on our hearts” by Kirsten Holmberg, published in the September-November 2020 issue
of Our Daily Bread.
One reply on “October 2020 Message”
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