Psalm 119:97 Savor

Our beagle Katie, like most dogs, loved a good bone.

Whenever we'd have steak for dinner, my wife would save the bones,with the scraps attached.  We don't eat steaks all that often, so she would freeze them instead of just tossing them all to Katie at once.  She parceled them out to her one at a time.

Katie would jump around eagerly, showing lots of love to the bearer of such a wonderful gift.  But once she had the bone in her possession, she'd run off to hide somewhere.

People sometimes forget their domesticated pets are at heart wild animals. Watching a dog with a bone makes this viscerally evident.

Katie would gnaw on that bone for hours, growling over it and sometimes yipping with carnivorous intensity. Her respiration increased and her muscles tensed and stretched with the effort.

Whatever you did, you never wanted to try to take that bone away from her.  Katie the pleasant pet turned instantly into Katie the beagle-ized wolf.  Her lips curled back in a snarl, her teeth bared.  Her eyes betrayed the threat posture of the predator, but also a recognition that she was threatening the person who sometimes fed her cheddar cheese flavored doggy treats.

One winter Katie got loose and was roaming the woods behind our house for several hours. She returned with something ugly dangling from her mouth and slinked into her dog house.  I went out to hook the leash back onto her and was met with a wolfish snarl.

I talked gently to her and the loyal pet part of her brain allowed me to fasten the leash to her collar.  While I was that close I realized her prize from the woods was the unidentifiable long-dead carcass of something small.  It might have been a rabbit or a squirrel or even a gnome, but from its look and smell it had been dead for a long while.

I wasn't willing to let Katie consume something that might be carrying disease, but how in the world was I going to get it from her?

Only one thing would do.  I went into the house and returned with the shorter walking leash and a sandwich-square of American cheese.

There is nothing in the world she loved more than cheese, apparently not even smelly, dead wildlife.  I waved the fluorescent orange square near her nose and then tossed it a few feet behind me.  She looked back and forth between the cheese, me, and her dead thing several times.

Finally, she turned her back on me and buried the carcass in the cedar ships inside her dog house, then darted out to the cheese.

I snagged her collar with the leash and then forcibly drug her around to the other side of the house and secured her to a tree.  I then dug around inside her dog house and found the disgusting treat and threw it as far I could into the woods.

When I returned Katie to her regular leash, she darted into her house and nearly turned it upside down searching for her nasty prize.  By the time she came out and looked accusingly at me, I had a steak bone from the freezer to toss to her.  We had microwaved it for a minute or two, but I'm sure it was still cold in the core.

She didn't care.  She immediately began gnawing on it, forgetting about her previous treasure.

Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.

Psalm 119:97

The Hebrew word translated as meditation in our English Bibles is hagah, a word also used to onomatopoetically describe the guttural growl/purr of a lion gnawing on the bone marrow of a kill.

When I devote myself to reading the Word, I dig deep for meaning, toss it about in my mind for understanding, and contemplate its nuances to apply it to life.  I can lose all track of time as I get lost in the depths of my meditations.  My pulse quickens at each new insight, my hunger and thirst for righteousness is excited.

Like my beagle, sometimes I come across other things to sink my meditative teeth into.  Some of those may excite my interest but are dangerous to my soul. Only by forcibly turning my attention back toward the Word can I tear myself away from the influences of decay and death.

What are you sinking your teeth into these days?  What makes you salivate?  The latest internet gossip? Polarizing political rumors? Sports? Video games? Your job?

Or are you gnawing on God's Word, eagerly working your way down to the rich marrow?

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12